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Chinese Art: Peony and Bird Vase Blue and White Yuan Dynasty

Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art
SALE HK0203 LOT 285
SESSION 1 | 25 Apr 04 5:00 PM.
Hong Kong
A VERY RARE BLUE AND WHITE 'FLOWER AND BIRD' VASE
YUAN DYNASTY
1,500,000—2,000,000 HKD
Lot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 1,406,400 HKD
MEASUREMENTS
measurements note
42 cm., 16 1/2 in.
DESCRIPTION
of meiping form, the tall body supported on a slightly flared foot elegantly rising to broad shoulders rounding to a waisted neck and an everted lipped rim, the exterior intricately painted in a warm greyish cobalt-blue with a broad band of peony flower-heads emitting long undulating leafy stems, a collar of cash diaper and a band of four ruyi-heads at the shoulders, each ruyi enclosing a different bird soaring amidst a distinct spray of flowers including peony and chrysanthemum, all below a band of lotus florets at the neck, and above a narrow border of diamond-diaper and wide lappet border at the foot
Quantity: 1

CATALOGUE NOTE
This meiping is most unusual in its delicate outline-and-wash painting style, which was otherwise rarely used in the Yuan dynasty; and it is also rare to find a meiping painted right up to the neck and on the rim, which may suggest that this piece was made without a cover.

In its painting manner, the piece is very similar to a large dragon-decorated jar from the Hobart collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics: The World's Great Collections, vol.10, Tokyo, 1980, col.pl.43.

A meiping of very similar design but painted in the more customary style and the rim, neck and uppermost part of the shoulder left plain white, is illustrated in John Alexander Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine, Washington, D.C., 1956, pl.25 bottom right; another was included in the Min Chiu Society exhibition An Anthology of Chinese Ceramics, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1980, cat.no.71; and two other meiping with smaller peony blooms, originally probably forming a pair, and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, respectively, are illustrated in the exhibition catalogue Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Yüan Dynasty (1279-1368), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1968, cat.no.138; and in Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1987, pl.138.

Compare also two covered vases with related design, with panels of flowers around the shoulder, lacking the birds, one from the S.C. Ko Tianminlou collection, illustrated in Zhongguo taoci quanji, vol.11, Shanghai, 2000, pl.148, and previously sold in our London rooms, 10th December 1985, lot 191; the other from the collection of Ernst Schaefer and the Su Lin An Collection, sold in our London rooms, 2nd April 1974, lot 188, and in these rooms, 31st October 1995, lot 308.

JBOC Note: The Yuan Dynasty was the Mongol Dynasty from 1279-1368 A.D.

I am not looking to buy or sell. I am reviewing this object to place it in context and to use it as a teaching aid.

Thanks and best wishes,

J. Barry O'Connell Jr.

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