A fine underglaze-blue and copper-red vase, fanghu Qing Dynasty, 18th century

of archaic bronze fanghu form, finely painted on the front and back with a pair of swooping phoenix in bright copper-red, amid a peony meander of red blooms and underglaze-blue leafy stems, the sides decorated with a similar floral design, the neck flanked by a pair of animal-mask and mock loop handles, all between ruyi and lappet bands at the rim and base, the foot encircled with a pendant leaf band   

Collection of Robert C. Bruce.
Sotheby's London, 12th May 1953, lot 131.  
Collection of W. A. Evill.
Sotheby's London, 17th December 1980, lot 640.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 17th May 1989, lot 223. 

Soame Jenyns, Later Chinese Porcelain, London, 1951, pl. LXXXVI, fig. 2 (b).

 

Another vase from the Bruce Collection, now in the City Art Gallery, Bristol, of the same design but decorated in 'famille-rose' enamels and underglaze-blue and with a Qianlong seal mark, was sold in our London rooms, 12th May, 1953, lot 129, and is illustrated in Jenyns, ibid., pl. LXXVI, fig. 2 (a), together with the present unmarked vase.  Another vase of the same form was sold at Christie's London, 12th December 1988, lot 327; and one decorated entirely in copper-red with a Qianlong seal mark, was sold in these rooms, 29th November 1978, lot 281.