A rare cloisonné enamel 'floral' bowl, Ming dynasty, Yongle / Xuande period

Christie's Hong Kong, 2nd November 1999, lot 798.  

Asian Private Collection.

Sotheby's New York, 21st March 2018, lot 586.

This rare early Ming bowl is remarkable in its blending of classical Chinese imagery and Himalayan metalwork. Accentuated by a raised band that encircles the exterior and frames elegant lotus scrolls, this charming vessel is emblematic of the process of refinement and sinicization of Buddhist-style imagery in the fifteenth century.

Tibetan-inspired cloisonné enamel vessels of this type were created for use in Buddhist temples and thus decorated with designs suitable for their ceremonial function and surroundings. In this way, the dense composition of lotus scrolls with spiky blooms that often filled the background of Tibetan paintings has been adopted here by Chinese craftsmen as the main decorative motif. Indeed, variations of this scrolling lotus design were applied in the Xuande period to a variety of ritual artefacts in porcelain, lacquer and bronze. Compare a related cloisonné kundika, similarly decorated with lotus scrolls interlaced with raised bands of gilt bronze, from the collections of T. B. Kitson and Sir Harry Garner, sold in our London rooms, 18th October 1960, lot 104, now preserved in the British Museum, London (accession no. 1977,0718.1); and a blue and white bowl of Xuande mark and period in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsuan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 184.

A small number of very closely related bowls of this type are known. Compare two examples from the Pierre Uldry Collection included in the exhibition Chinesisches Cloisonné die Sammlung Pierre Uldry, Museum Reitberg, Zurich, 1985, cat. nos 20 and 21, the former with lotuses rendered in block colors; another sold in our London rooms, 18th June 1985, lot 242; and a fourth example sold at Christie's London, 1st December 1997, lot 277. Compare also a bowl of this type, but the raised band decorated with red scrolling leaves on a turquoise ground, sold in our London rooms, 13th December 1988, lot 43.