CHINA / 5000 YEARS

CHINA / 5000 YEARS

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 491. A wucai 'lotus' month cup, Mark and period of Kangxi 清康熙 五彩六月荷花花神盃 《大清康熙年製》款.

A wucai 'lotus' month cup, Mark and period of Kangxi 清康熙 五彩六月荷花花神盃 《大清康熙年製》款

Auction Closed

May 25, 10:44 AM GMT

Estimate

400,000 - 600,000 HKD

Lot Details

Description

A wucai 'lotus' month cup,

Mark and period of Kangxi

清康熙 五彩六月荷花花神盃

《大清康熙年製》款


d. 6.6 cm, h. 5 cm

Christie's London, 4th November 2008, lot 215.
Eskenazi Ltd, London.
The Meiyintang Collection.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 4th April 2012, lot 45 (part lot).

倫敦佳士得2008年11月4日,編號215
埃斯卡納齊,倫敦
玫茵堂收藏
香港蘇富比2012年4月4日,編號45(其一)
Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol.4 , London, 1994-2010, pl. 1728-39 (part lot).

康蕊君,《玫茵堂中國陶瓷》,卷四,倫敦,1994至2010年,圖版1728-39(其一)
Month cups depicting seasonal flowers accompanied by pertinent two-line poems represent a classic design of the Kangxi period. Very delicately potted, they are painted in the proper wucai palette of underglaze blue and overglaze enamels, which was devised in the Ming dynasty, but rarely used in the Qing, when the underglaze colour was generally omitted. On these month cups, the designs are generally sketched on the unglazed porcelain in a faint underglaze blue.

Slight differences in size, colours, writing styles and marks between individual cups and different months suggest that even these cups may not have been produced as sets of twelve, but perhaps issued consecutively, as the year evolved, to be assembled at the end.

The present cup is associated with the sixth lunar month of the year. It shows a pair of mandarin ducks swimming in a lotus pond with a kingfisher swooping down from on high, the male duck and kingfisher with colourful plumage, the female duck in a pale greyish aubergine, and the lotus flowers and leaves shown in different stages of maturity. The reverse bears the poem 'gen shi ni zhong yu, xin cheng lu xia zhu', followed by a seal mark reading shang (appreciation).

The poem can be translated as follows:
The roots are like jade gleaming in the mud.
The hearts contain pearls when dew has descended.

此品為六月花神盃,描繪鴛鴦成對,泳於荷塘,天邊有翠鳥俯衝飛下。雄鴛翠鳥羽翼斑斕多色,雌鴛則淡紫呈灰。新芽舊葉,蓓蕾穠花,不同之貌,盡在其中。詩題:「根是泥中玉,心承露下珠」,鈴「賞」印,底落六字兩行楷書款。

花神盃,繪四時花卉,書題畫詩二句,乃康熙朝瓷作經典。五彩,自明有之,包括鈷青及釉上彩,至清時,釉下彩料卻漸被忽略。康熙花神盃,坯冶精妙細膩,皆先以釉下淡青在坯上起草勾勒,沿襲明風,巧飾傳統五彩調子。

花神盃雖說成組,各盃在尺寸、顏色、書風和款識上,皆略有差異,別於其他月份之盃,暗示它們可能並非成套生產,而是逐一燒造,最後才湊合成組。