A fine and rare Pair of blue and white Ewers and Covers Qing Dynasty, Qianlong period

each of finely potted full pear shape and oval section, moulded on each side with a raised teardrop panel and painted in vivid cobalt-blue with a scaly five-clawed dragon leaping amid scrolling clouds, against a ground of meandering lotus below the waisted neck encircled by a raised band of keyfret issuing upright plantain leaves and suspending ruyi-heads, flanked by an ear-handle with eyelet, and a cloud strut securing an ‘S’-shaped spout, all decorated with stylised lotus sprays, the flared galleried rim beneath a subtly domed cover with further lotus scrolls centring the bud knop

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 1st May 2001, lot 537. 

Blue-and-white vessels based on early Ming shapes and using early Ming motifs, such as these ewers, belong to the classic repertoire of the imperial Jingdezhen kilns during the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods, but it is extremely rare to find a ewer of this type, which represents a reinterpretation rather than a close copy of an earlier style.

One identical ewer from the Ohlmer collection in the Roemer-Museum, Hildesheim, Germany, has been published in the collection catalogue by Ulrich Wiesner, Chinesisches Porzellan, Mainz am Rhein, 1981, no. 70, colour plate p. 197, with a detail showing one of the dragon panels illustrated on the cover.

The shape is reminiscent of that of a Yongle ewer from the collection of T.Y. Chao, also decorated with dragon panels but lacking the flower scrolls, lacking also the cloud-shaped strut and differing in proportion, which was sold twice in our London rooms, 1974 and 1977, and in these rooms, 19^th May 1987, lot 228.