A BLUE AND WHITE AND COPPER-RED 'DRAGON' MOONFLASK MARK AND PERIOD OF QIANLONG

of compressed globular form sitting on a short straight foot and rising to a cylindrical neck flanked by two curved handles, painted on each side in red with a ferocious five-clawed dragon with eyes picked out in blue, its writhing scaly body encircling a 'flaming pearl' amidst blue cloud scrolls and above swelling crested waves, the neck with further blue cloud scrolls and a double line border at the rim, the base inscribed with the six-character seal mark in underglaze-blue

Sotheby's London, 12th June 1990, lot 305.

A slightly smaller Qianlong flask of the same shape and design from the Qing court collection and still in the Palace Museum today, is illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (III), Shanghai, 2000, pl. 213; and another, sold in our London rooms, 5th November 1963, lot 203, is now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Compare also a larger flask of this form and design, from the Gerald Reitlinger collection, illustrated in Soame Jenyns, Later Chinese Porcelain, London, 1951, pl. XCIV fig. 1; and another larger moonflask in the Hong Kong Museum of Art, included in the exhibition The Wonders of the Potter's Palette, Hong Kong, 1984, cat.no. 66.