A RARE CLOISONNE ENAMEL 'FIGURES' BOWL MING DYNASTY, JIAJING PERIOD |

cast with deep rounded sides rising from a short splayed foot to a flaring rim, the exterior enamelled against a turquoise ground with four shaped cartouches, each variously enclosing figurative scenes amongst garden landscapes, the first with an attendant presenting a flower to a seated scholar, the second with a scholar looking back towards a boy carrying a qin, the third with a seated scholar holding a wine cup with an attendant standing beside supporting an ewer, the fourth with a boy offering a vessel to a scholar, all interspersed with the babao on a ground of swirls above lotus lappets, the rim with a chevron band enclosing demi-florets and the foot with a band of swirls, similarly decorated to the interior with a central medallion enclosing a shou character, encircled by four leaping fish alternating with stylised lotus sprays, below a floral band encircling the rim, the turquoise base with a stylised floral medallion

Jiajing period cloisonné enamelled bowls of this form are extremely rare, with only a small number preserved in museum and private collections. For a slightly smaller bowl of similar form in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, decorated to the exterior with lotus flowers and to the interior with a galloping horse encircled by lions, see Enamel Ware in the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties, Taipei, 1999, pl. 8. See also a bowl decorated with fish in the Uldry Collection, housed in the Rietberg Museum, Zurich, illustrated by Helmut Brinker and Albert Lutz, Chinese Cloisonne: The Pierre Uldry Collection, Zurich, 1988, cat. no. 33. A Jiajing reign-marked cloisonné enamel bowl of this form, similarly decorated on the interior with a shou character surrounded by cranes in flight, in the Museé des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, is illustrated in Cloisonné. Chinese Enamels from the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, Bard Graduate Centre, New York, 2011, pl. 6.16, together with a bowl enamelled with a pair of fishes in the interior, pl. 4.13, and two boxes decorated with Daoist immortals, pls  6.15 and 7.12. For figural decoration of similar composition on cloisonné enamel, see that on a gu-form vase in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Compendium of Collections in the Palace Museum, Enamels, vol. 1, Cloisonné in the Yuan and Ming Dynasty Beijing, 2011, no. 129.

Pengliang Lu in ‘Beyond the Women’s Quarters. Meaning and Function of Cloisonné in the Ming and Qing Dynasties’, op. cit., p. 66, notes that bowls decorated both on the exterior and interior were used during ritual ceremonies.

For a closely related counterpart in porcelain, revealing the close dialogue between the imperial enamel workshops and porcelain kilns at Jingdezhen, see a Jiajing reign-marked bowl sold in these rooms, 10th April 2006, lot 1674.