Lot 82
Treasury 6, no. 1190 (‘Symbolic Scholarly Trappings’)
HK$37,500

Famille rose enamels on colourless glaze on porcelain; with a slightly convex lip and recessed flat foot surrounded by a protruding convex foot rim; moulded and enamelled with a continuous design of symbolic scholarly trappings (including a vase with millet and a branch of coral, a weiqi 圍棋 board with two containers for pieces, a gilt-bronze tripod incense burner, a low table, a water pot, a fish-headed staff from which a lantern hangs, a vase containing a flywhisk, another low table set with a further vase with millet and a small covered pot, a teapot, a fangding 方鼎 with a mythical-beast finial, a vase containing a feather, and another with a ruyi sceptre and a branch of blossoming prunus, with another lantern dangling from the branches, another water vessel with a spoon in it, another low stand with a volume of books and an incense tool vase containing an incense-spade, another vase containing two rolled scrolls, a qin, and a crackle-glazed covered vase, all set on a ground of meander infill beneath a neck band of formalized lingzhi; the foot inscribed in iron-red seal script Qianlong nian zhi 乾隆年製 (‘Made in the Qianlong era’), the lip and inner neck glazed, the interior partially glazed
Imperial kilns, Jingdezhen, 1785–1799
Height: 6.22 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.60/1.51 cm
Stopper: turquoise; gilt-silver collar

Provenance:
Gerd Lester (1986)

Published:
Treasury 6, no. 1190

The date on the present example is not in question, but it is worth noting that the formalization of the lower left-hand quadrant of the Qian character of the mark is drawn in a way different to both the standard format and the format we think may have been associated with the abdication years (see Sale 3, lot 117).

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.