A fine and rare blue and white double-gourd flask seal mark and period of Qianlong

finely painted in Ming-style in brilliant purplish tones of cobalt-blue with simulated 'heaping and piling' effect, the lower bulb decorated with a dense lotus scroll meander below borders of ruyi-pendents, formal floral sprays, lotus lappets, dots and cresting waves within raised borders on the shoulders and neck, the upper bulb with sprigs of lingzhi surrounded by curly leaf stems, the arched handles with carefully modelled ruyi-head terminals (wood stand)

Christie's Hong Kong, 27th April 1997, lot 77. 
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 27th April 2003, lot 56. 

 

Sotheby's Thirty Years in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2003, pl. 281. 

This type of blue-and-white double-gourd vase with a truncated lower body is rare although a similar flask was sold in these rooms, 26th October 1993, lot 189. Compare also a flask in the Chang Foundation decorated with different flower scrolls in doucai enamels illustrated in James Spencer, Selected Chinese Ceramics from Han to Qing Dynasties, Taipei, 1990, pl. 160.  Another example of this rare shape, but covered in teadust glaze, is from the Hotung Collection, sold in these rooms, 21st May 1979, lot 126, and included in the Min Chiu Society Exhibition An Anthology of Chinese Art, Hong Kong, 1985, cat. no. 188.  See also a blue-and-white double-gourd flask with a rounded rather than a flat base, similarly decorated with flower scrolls, illustrated in Qian Zhenzong, Qingdai ciqi shangjian, Shanghai, 1994, pl. 160. 

For the prototype of this form and design, see a blue-and-white flask of Yongzheng mark and period, decorated with a flower scroll design with interlocking sprays of lotus in underglaze-red, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (III), Shanghai, 2000, pl. 200.  Another earlier related example is a pair of Yongzheng mark and period teadust flasks, illustrated in Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1986, pl. 961, and sold in our London rooms, 10th December 1985, lot 271.