A rare blue and white 'floral' mountain-form brushrest, Mark and period of Zhengde | 明正德 青花花卉紋山形筆擱 《大明正德年製》款

Ascending the throne at age 14, the Zhengde Emperor was fascinated by foreign cultures and invited many Muslims to serve as his trusted advisors, eunuchs and envoys at his court. Works of art, such as the present, are testament to the Emperor's full curiosity and embrace of the culture. Modeled in the form of a mountain, the brush rest is intricately painted with floral scrolls with an Arabic inscription to the center of each side.

The present lot belongs to a small group of remarkable brush rests that are in important museum and private collections worldwide. See a closely related brush rest, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (accession no. 18.56.14), and illustrated Suzanne G. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989, pl. 163; another is in the British Museum, London (accession no. Franks.147.b), and illustrated in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, pl. 8:3. For examples sold at auction, see one from the Frederick M. Mayer Collection, sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 23rd May 1978, lot 38; another sold in these rooms, 6 November 1981, lot 263, later entering the Greenwald Collection and sold again at Christie's Hong Kong, 1st December 2010.