An extremely rare and important doucai ‘lotus pond’ jar, Chenghua six-character mark and of the period. Estimate £400,000 – 600,000 (€510,000 – 770,000). Photo Bonhams
LONDON – Once in a while something truly rare, special and unique appears in the art market and the buzz being created at Bonhams by the sale of a small, fairly modest looking jar painted with a lotus motif from the Ming period, is tangible.
The ‘lotus pond jar’ is one of the top items in Bonhams next sale of fine Chinese Art on November 6th in New Bond Street, London. Estimated to sell for £400,000 to £600,000 it is evident that these figures may only be an indication of this prized jar’s value. The jar comes from a European private collection and has not been seen at auction for over half a century. Its sale coincides this year with the British Museums major exhibition on the art of the Ming dynasty.
The jar bears the mark of the Chinese Emperor Chenghua who ruled between 1464 1487. Earlier in the same century Chinese potters at the Imperial kilns began for the first time to write on top-quality vessels. And this mark is the ultimate sign of Imperial ‘quality control’.
For centuries most Chinese connoisseurs have considered Chenghua period ceramics as the finest ever created in China. The exceptionally clear glaze did not require heavy ornamentation but could be sparingly and elegantly decorated. The most sensational development in Ming Dynasty porcelain was the arrival of a lustrous white glaze on which to paint over a design for fixing in a secondary firing of the vase.
Adding to the romance, beauty and significance of this jar is the use of the lotus flower as a decorative device, something closely association with the Buddha.
The creamy white body is finely painted in a soft underglaze blue with delicate outlines further enamelled in rich iron-red, soft yellow, and vibrant green with an elegantly arranged profusion of variously opening lotus flowers and spreading and crinkling leaves. The masterful design is further highlighted by two small butterflies in flight.
Colin Sheaf, Head of Asian Art at Bonhams and the company’s Deputy Chairman and Asia Chairman, says: « Three decades in the Chinese Art trade does not entirely prepare you for an object like this. When I saw it for the first time, after years of storage, it had that certain something, that charisma of the truly spectacular object which creates a frisson of excitement in anyone who knows about Chinese porcelain. Its very simplicity is of course part of its charm, as this reflects the ambition of all great Chinese art. »
An extremely rare and important doucai ‘lotus pond’ jar, Chenghua six-character mark and of the period. Estimate £400,000 – 600,000 (€510,000 – 770,000). Photo Bonhams
The creamy white body finely painted in a soft underglaze blue with delicate outlines and enamelled in rich iron-red, soft yellow, and vibrant green with an elegantly arranged profusion of variously opening lotus flowers and spreading and crinkling leaves alternating between the upper and lower registers and the flowers alternating between iron-red petals with yellow seed pods or central petals and yellow outer petals and iron-red centres, all emerging from regularly rounded waves crested with foam, the masterful design further highlighted by two small butterflies in flight and bordered by fine lines of underglaze blue and iron-red enamel at the foot and neck. 17cm (6 3/4in) diam.
Provenance: John Walter Richardson (d.1951), Becton House, Barton-on-Sea, by repute
A European private collection since 1964.
According to the present owner the jar was acquired by him at Riddett & Adams Smith, Auctioneers, The Auction Rooms, Richmond Hill, Bournemouth Square, in 1964. It was offered as part of the ‘Collection of the Late J.W.Richardson, of Pekin; formed mostly at the turn of the century and removed for convenience of sale from Becton House, Barton-on-Sea‘ (Catalogue of Furniture, 4th, 5th and 6th February 1964).
Regretfully given the brief and non-specialist nature of the 1964 cataloguing descriptions, it has not been possible to identify which lot in the 1964 sale is the present lot. A copy of the 1964 catalogue is available for consultation.
Illustrated: The Connoisseur: Complete Encyclopedia of Antiques, London, 1975, p.420
Encyclopedia of Antiques, London, 1976, p.13
R.Krahl, Liu Xinyuan, Ts’ai Ho-pi and J.Thompson, The Emperor’s broken china: Reconstructing Chenghua porcelain, London, 1995, p.109
Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 29 April 1997, lot 407 (illustrated as a related example to lot 407, a blue and white ‘lotus pond’ jar, Chenghua mark and period)
Notes: John Walter Richardson (d.1951) of Becton House, Barton-on-Sea, was an officer in the Chinese Customs Department, Beijing. He was awarded the Peking Siege Commemoration Medal 1900 for his efforts in defending the European Legations during the Boxer Rebellion. His collection, according to the 1964 catalogue, was formed mostly at the turn of the 20th century. The rarity of the jar and defined imperial quality would strongly indicate that it was part of the imperial collection although the time and circumstances under which it left the imperial collection are unknown, nor is it known at what date prior to 1951 did Richardson acquire the jar.
Importantly this provenance confirms that this extraordinarily rare doucai jar of the celebrated Chenghua period has been handed down from generation to generation since the Chenghua period and that it was not unearthed during the excavations at Zushan in 1987. Indeed it has been calculated that extant pieces of intact Chenghua porcelain amount to under six hundred (see The Emperor’s Broken China: Reconstructing Chenghua Porcelain, London, 1995, p.12.).
Chenghua period porcelain was much admired and prized since early periods. Shen Defu (1578-1642) notes in Wanli Ye Huo Bian: ‘This reign’s ceramic wares with the blue decoration on a white ground filled in with the five colours, are the crown of the past and the present. Xuande wares were the most expensive but today Chenghua wares have also become expensive, surpassing those of Xuande, Both periods have been endowed by heaven and give attention to the small arts; they display such fine workmanship!‘ (see Wanli Ye Huo Bian, Zhonghua Shuju, 1980, juan 26).
The present lot represents the only known polychrome version of this ‘lotus pond’ design on a jar. It was first published by Julian Thompson in ‘Towards a Catalogue Raisonné of Chenghua porcelain’, The Emperor’s Broken China, ibid., pp.109-110, fig.2, where it is illustrated from three different sides. He noted it ‘is of exceptional brilliance’, further commenting that ‘this doucai pattern seems to be unique in having a blue and white equivalent’.
Three blue and white ‘lotus pond’ jars, Chenghua six-character marks and of the period, have been published and illustrated:
1. Sir H.Garner, Oriental Blue & White, London, 1970, pp.12-13, col.pl.C; Chinese Ceramics: One Hundred Selected Masterpieces from Collections in Japan, England, France and America, Takashimaya Department Store, Tokyo, 1960, no.90; further published in Mayuyama Seventy Years, vol.1, Tokyo, 1976, p.264, pl.791; and also in Sekai tōji zenshū/ Ceramic Art of the World: Ming Dynasty,vol.14, Tokyo, 1976, p.255, fig.112; possibly the same jar illustrated from the opposite side in Tokubetsuten Chugoku toki bi o miru kokoro/ Chinese Ceramics, Enlightening through Beauty, Tokyo, 2006, pl.46.
2. Sekai tōji zenshū/ Ceramic Art of the World: Ming Dynasty, vol.14, Tokyo, 1976, p.170, pl.165 and p.189, fig.46; sold at Christie’s London 9 June 1975, lot 76; illustrated by A. du Boulay, Christie’s Pictorial History of Chinese Ceramics, Oxford, 1984, p.126, fig.1; sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on 29 April 1997, lot 407;
3. From the Au Bak Ling Collection, illustrated by J.Thompson, ‘Chenghua Porcelain in the Au Bak Ling Collection’,Chinese Ceramics: Selected Articles from Orientations 1982-1998, Hong Kong, 1999, p.391, fig.2; sold at Sotheby’s London, 15 July 1980, lot 109.
For a similar ‘lotus pond’ design on other Chenghua mark and period pieces see: a blue and white cup from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Ch’eng-hua Porcelain Ware, 1465-1487, Taipei, pl.56; another similar cup from the Qing Court Collection, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (II), Hong Kong, 2000, pl.39; and compare also another cup illustrated in A Legacy of Chenghua: Imperial Porcelain of the Changhua Reign Excavated from Zhushan, Jingdezhen, Hong Kong, 1993, pl.C56. See also a blue and white stembowl, illustrated by J.Ayers, Chinese Ceramics: The Koger Collection, London, 1985, pl.52 and another but in underglaze blue and red, Chenghua, decorated with fish in a lotus pond, from the Au Bak Ling collection (also sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on 14 November 1983, lot 125) and illustrated by J.Thompson, ‘Chenghua Porcelain in the Au Bak Ling Collection’, Chinese Ceramics: Selected Articles from Orientations 1982-1998, Hong Kong, 1999, p.395, fig.12.
The form of the Chenghua jar follows that of those made during the Yongle period. See for example a white-glazed anhua-decorated jar, Yongle, from the J.M.Hu Family collection, sold at Sotheby’s New York on 4 June 1985, lot 1. In the Chenghua period, the form of the present lot may also be compared to that of doucai jars decorated with floral sprays amidst rockwork, Chenghua mark and period, such as the one from the Percival David Collection, British Museum, illustrated in Imperial Taste: Chinese Ceramics from the Percival David Foundation, San Francisco, 1989, pl.41 (PDF 797) and another in the Palace Museum, Beijing, The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, Hong Kong, 1999, pl.167.
The importance of Chenghua wares in later periods, and particularly the doucai decorative scheme, is further evident in wares imitating those of the Chenghua period productions, dating from the Jiajing reign in the Ming dynasty onwards and in particular from the 18th century during the Qing dynasty. The Palace Museum, Beijing, contains two related ‘floral spray and rockwork’ doucai jars and covers, with Chenghua marks but dated to the Kangxi and Yongzheng periods respectively, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, Hong Kong, 1999, pls.211 and 232.
The decoration on the present jar demonstrates the exceptionally refined and naturalistic painting in underglaze blue typical of the finest wares of the Chenghua period, colourfully filled over the glaze with iron-red, green and yellow enamels, with the spacious composition allowing the appreciation of the unctuous white glaze.
We would like to thank Ayako Mayuyama of Mayuyama & Co., Ltd, George Lee of Daijindo Gallery, Robin Markbreiter of Arts of Asia, and Yifawn Lee of Orientations for their assistance with research for this footnote and their kind permission to reproduce images.