Lot 27. A Rare Blue and White Floral Stem Cup, Mark and Period of Xuande (1426-1435); 10.5 cm, 4 1/8 in. Estimate 3,000,000-5,000,000 HKD. Lot Sold 5,780,000 HKD (742,614 USD). Photo Sotheby's

the globular body raised on a flared stem with a curved stepped base, the exterior of the body freely painted with a continuous scroll of carnations between a band of half-cash motifs at the rim and a row of upright petals encircling the stem, the interior decorated with a small lotus medallion within double circles in the centre, all above a waisted stem painted with two pairs of double lines above a row of pendant petals and dots, covered overall in a lustrous, glossy glaze save for the footring with a burnt orange edge.

Provenance: Bluett & Sons, London, December 1936.
Collection of Reginald Howard Reed Palmer (1898-1 970), no. 460.
Christie’s Hong Kong, l7th January 1989, lot 569.
Christies Hong Kong, 3lst October 2000, lot 857.
Eskenazi Ltd., London.

Literature: E. E. Bluett, ‘Chinese Works of Art in English Collections: The Collection of Mr. & Mrs. R.I-f.R. Palmer, I’, Apoio, April 1958, p. 160, fig. Vlll(a).
Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1651.

Note: Stem cups of this globular form, with an inward curved rather than flared rim, probably belong to the wide range of Yongle and Xuande porcelain shapes that derive their inspiration from Middle Eastern metalwork, and the petal borders above and below the waist of the stem seem to imitate gadrooning of the metal examples. Stem cups have a long tradition in Iran and were introduced to China prior to the Tang dynasty. Compare several Iranian stem cups of the l3th and l4th century, but without gadroons, in Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani, Islamic Metalwork from the Iranian World. 8th— l8th Centuries, London, 1982, p. 147, fig. 53, and cat.nos. 71,72,84 and 85.

The elegant carnation design was rarely used in the Ming dynasty, but is similarly found on blue-and-white tankards of Xuande mark and period, which equally follow a Middle Eastern form; for an example in Taiwan, see MingdaiXuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu/Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsûan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 12.

Fragments of a porcelain prototype in monochrome white, with a more accentuated, stepped foot, were recovered from the Yongle stratum of the imperial kilns site in Jingdezhen; see Imperial Porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande Periods Excavated from the Site of the Ming Imperial Facto,y at Jingdezhen, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1989, cat. no. 12.

A similar stem cup in the British Museum, London, is published in Jessica Harrison-Hail, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, no. 4: 21: one in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics. The World’s Greaf Collections, Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, 1980-82, vol. 10, no. 219; one from the Sir Percival David Collection in the British Museum, London, ibid., vol. 6, no. 90; one in the Capital Museum, Beijing, in Shoudu Bowuguan cang ci xuan [Selection 0f porcelains from the Capital Museum], Beijing, 1991, pI. 96; and one in the National Museum of China, Beijing, in Zhongguo Guojia Bowuguan guancang wenwu yanjiu con gshu/Studies on the Collections ofthe National Museum of China. Ciqi juan [Porcelain section], Mingdai [Ming dynastyj, Shanghai, 2007, pI. 34.

Stem cups ofthis form are also known with covers, aIl of them surprisingly poorly fitted to the opening of the cups; see two examples in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, in the exhibition catalogues MingdaiXuande guanyaojinghua tezhan tulu, op. cit., cat. no. 8, and Ming Xuande ciqi tezhan mulu/Catalogue ofa Special Exhibition ofHsuan-te PeriodPorcelain, Taipei, 1980, cat. no. 25; one in the Palace Museum, Beijing, from the Qing court collection, included in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang Ming chu qinghua ci [Early Ming blue-and-white porcelain in the Palace Museumj, Beijing, 2002, vol. 2, pI. 105; another in the Shanghai Museum, see Lu Minghua, Shanghai Bowuguan zangpin yanjiu daxi/Studies 0f the Shanghai Museum Collections : A Series of Monographs. Mingdai guanyao ciqi [Ming imperial porcelain], Shanghai, 2007, pI. 3-29; or the example in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., published in Oriental Ceramics, op.cit., vol. 9, no. 101. A fragmentary blue-and-white stem cup and cover of this design were also excavated from the waste heaps 0f the Ming imperial kiln site at Zhushan, Jingdezhen, see Jingdezhen chutu Ming Xuande guanyao ciqi/Xuande Imperial Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 27.

Sotheby's. The Meiyintang Collection, Part II - An Important Selection of Chinese Porcelains. Hong Kong 5 october 2011