Lot 142
Treasury6, no. 1163 (‘Wise Fisherman’)
HK$100,000

Famille rose enamels on colourless glaze on cobalt on porcelain; with a flat lip and slightly convex, elongated foot; moulded and painted on one main side with foreground, water, and distant hills extending horizontally across the picture plane, a tree growing from the foreshore tying the three registers together visually, a pointing peasant leading Wen Wang and one of his retainers towards Jiang Ziya, who is seated on the other side on a pale-green bank with shrubbery or diminutive trees growing behind him to the left, and a rocky, foliated cliff rising up beyond them, fishing in a broad waterway across which a tree-lined far shore is seen above and to the right, the sun above it partially obscured by formalized clouds, the panels surrounded by an underglaze blue formalized floral design detailed in gold enamel; the lip with a pale-brown glaze painted with gold enamel; the interior unglazed
Possibly imperial, Jingdezhen, 1770–1800
Height: 5.32 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.70/2.06 cm
Stopper: jadeite; silver collar

Provenance:
Hong Kong Auctioneers & Estate Agency, 29 September 1991, lot 171
Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd. (1991)

Published:
Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 145
Treasury 6, no. 1163

Exhibited:
Hong Kong Museum of Art, March–June 1994
National Museum of Singapore, November 1994–February 1995

From the same broad group as Sale 3, lot 140 and Sale 4, lot 52> sharing the use of moulded detail, famille rose enamels, and underglaze blue borders, this is a still-rarer subject.

A profusion of both Qianlong and Jiaqing marks on others of the broad group represented by this bottle demonstrates that the type was imperial. The absence of a reign mark does not necessarily mean a non-imperial product, and bottles such as this, which conform to reign-marked types and are of the same quality as imperial products, may have been simply unmarked wares for the court. It is also worth remembering that until the mid- to late Qianlong period, snuff taking was predominantly a northern habit, focussed at court; in the 1770s, say, despite the production we may imagine for a growing private market for snuff bottles all over China, it would still have been dwarfed by production to meet imperial demand, particularly at Jingdezhen. There is little evidence of substantial production for a private market at Jingdezhen until the early nineteenth century. A snuff taker in the South needed only one bottle to hold his snuff; even if he wanted to keep a few different grades of snuff at the ready in other bottles, he would not invest in a great number of vessels. The court, on the other hand, had an insatiable demand for snuff bottles. Quite apart from the large quantities used or collected by the emperor and his family, probably many thousands were distributed as gifts every year. All of this would have meant massive production for the court at a time when production for a private market at Jingdezhen must have been in its infancy, so it is not unreasonable to postulate that a bottle such as this might have been imperial.

The story illustrated is that of the meeting between King Wen and the strategist who was to help him overthrow the Shang dynasty, Jiang Ziya.

This is not the Sotheby’s sale catalogue. This is a product of Hugh Moss for the purposes of this website. For the catalogue details please refer to Sotheby’s website or request a copy of a printed sale catalogue from Sotheby’s.