A large blue and white triple-necked moonflask, Seal mark and period of Yongzheng | 清雍正 青花蝙蝠葫蘆纏枝花卉紋三口抱月瓶 《大清雍正年製》款

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 31st October 1995, lot 458.

香港蘇富比1995年10月31日，編號458

It is very rare to find a moonflask with triple necks, and even rarer in blue-and-white as the present piece. Moonflasks, copied from Middle Eastern shapes, were popular in the early Ming and much copied in the Yongzheng period, where the prototypes were sometimes painstakingly copied, and sometimes shapes and designs were developed further, like in this example.

Compare a moonflask of this form, but with a guan-type glaze and decorated with five raised characters in archaistic style on each side of its body, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Gugong Bowuyuan cang: Qingdai yuyao ciqi / Qing Porcelains from the Imperial Kilns Preserved in the Palace Museum, vol. 1, part 2, Beijing, 2005, pl. 148. A similar gourd vine design can be found on a blue-and-white single-necked moonflask in the Huaihaitang Collection, but with an additional medallion painted at the centre of its body and lacking the circular floral border around it, included in the exhibition Ethereal Elegance. Porcelain Vases of the Imperial Qing. The Huaihaitang Collection, Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2008, cat. no. 86.

三口抱月瓶，珍稀罕見，繪青花者，更是鳳毛麟角。抱月瓶器形源自中亞雛本，盛行於早明，雍正窰復燒，縝密仿傚古例，亦發展當朝創新設計，誠如本品。

比較北京故宮博物院藏一件仿官釉作例，綴以浮雕仿古紋飾，錄於《故宮博物院藏清代御窰瓷器》，卷1（下），北京，2005年，圖版148。懷海堂珍藏一件青花抱月瓶，同飾瓜瓞綿綿紋，器身中央綴圓形開光，無外圈纏枝花卉紋，展出於《機暇清賞：懷海堂藏清代御窰瓷缾》，香港中文大學，香港，2008年，編號86。