Lot 135
Treasury 6, no. 1300 (‘A Coin for the Prunus Garden’)
HK$50,000

Cobalt on porcelain; with a flat lip and recessed flat foot surrounded by a protruding flat footrim, with a raised circular panel on each main side and a raised oval panel on each narrow side; painted in cobalt pigment, on one main side with a copy of an ancient Han dynasty tile end, complete with its inscription Changsheng weiyang (Long life without end) in seal script, and on the other with a five-zhu coin, the narrow side panels, set in place of mask handles, painted with lingzhi; the foot inscribed in oxidized cobalt regular script, Meiyuan yazhi (‘Elegantly made [at the behest of the Master of] the Plum Blossom Garden’); the interior unglazed
1821–1850
Height: 5.53 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.7/1.6 cm
Stopper: turquoise matrix; vinyl collar

Provenance:
John Ault (2002)
Robert Kleiner (2002)

Published:
JICSBS, Autumn 1990, p. 7, fig 31
Kleiner 1990,no. 176
Treasury 6, no. 1300

Like the lot 167 in the present auction, this is oxidized cobalt pigment without the glaze covering that would have turned it into standard blue-and-white decoration. It is used here, however, in an extremely rare and rather effective way and is smooth, perhaps even intentionally polished after firing. On lot 167, the cobalt stands in noticeable relief and is rough.

One side is a copy of a common tile-end design from the palaces of the Han dynasty. It was misread in Treasury 6, but that is because the bottle accurately reflects the slapdash nature of most tile-ends; they were not works of art but architectural details made by labourers whose job was to copy patterns of characters they could not read on hundreds of unfired tile-ends and to do it quickly. Tile-ends and rubbings made from them were avidly collected in later centuries, especially in the Qing dynasty, but not because of their calligraphic polish.

On the five-zhu coin, please see Sale 4, lot 45. As we note there, the coin was abandoned in 621, but only after several centuries of use, and it remained a symbol of continuity; the Daoguang emperor was once painted with the coin or a replica of it as part of his belt buckle.

The shape and detailing of the porcelain bottle are typically Daoguang, and we feel safe in dating it to that reign even without a reign mark. What it does have in place of a reign mark is a private mark. Meiyuan, Plum Blossom Garden, was adopted by several recorded Qing individuals as a sobriquet, and this snuff bottle was probably ordered by one of them, assuming it is not the studio name of the potter himself. Generally, this piece fits comfortably into a range of privately made wares first produced at Jingdezhen in the mid-Qing period. The practice became more popular during the Daoguang period, and many of the articles bear studio names, some of them, we have suggested, of members of the imperial family. Perhaps future research will identify a antiquarian who called himself Meiyuan and possessed the interest and the means to commission this fine bottle.

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.