A FINE AND RARE 'WUCAI' 'GARLIC-MOUTH' VASE MARK AND PERIOD OF WANLI

THIS IS A PREMIUM LOT.   CLIENTS WHO WISH TO BID ON PREMIUM LOTS ARE REQUESTED TO COMPLETE THE PREMIUM LOT PRE-REGISTRATION 3 WORKING DAYS PRIOR TO THE SALE.




the well-potted pear-shaped body supported by a wide straight foot, rising to a garlic-bulb shaped mouth, decorated in colours of the wucai palette including brilliant tones of iron-red and strong purplish underglaze-blue, with frolicking mandarin ducks, herons, and various other birds in a lotus pond grown with pondweed, willow and lotus blooms, beneath a band of ruyi lappets enclosing foliate flowerheads, the slender neck decorated with butterflies fluttering among flower sprays issuing from ornamental rocks, with crickets, a frog and a mantis, the garlic-bulb mouth with strings of beads and a band of pendant ruyi-shaped heads enclosing lotus sprigs, the rim inscribed with the six-character mark in underglaze-blue in a cartouche reserved on a keyfret band

Acquired from an antiques dealer in France in 1985.

The present vase belongs to a group of wucai vases of the same shape with varying decoration. A similar vase from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, is illustrated in Yeh Pei-Lang, Gems of the Wucai Porcelain, Taipei, 1996, pl. 83, together with another wucai vase of this shape painted with dragons, also in the National Palace Museum collection, pl. 84. See also a vase included in John Ayers, The Baur Collection, vol. 2, Geneva, 1969, pl. A203; and two related vases from the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, with waterfowl design, foliage scroll around the shoulder and pendent foliage around the head, included in the exhibition Imperial Overglaze - Enamelled Wares in the Late Ming Dynasty, Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 1995, cat.no. 22.

A closely related vase was sold in these rooms, 23rd October, 2005, lot 456; and another was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 6th November 1997, lot 1050. Compare also a vase included in the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1935, cat.no. 1912, and in the Oriental Ceramic Society exhibition Polychrome Porcelain of the Ming and Manchu Dynasties, London, 1950, cat.no. 154, sold in our London rooms, 24th March 1953, lot 62.  Another Wanli mark and period wucai vase of the same shape and pattern, but with different secondary decorative bands, was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 13th January 1989, lot 546; and one was sold in our Los Angeles rooms, 2nd November 1981, lot 304.