Lot 25. A very rare copper-red and  celadon-green 'Sanduo' bowl, Mark and period of Yongzheng. 15.4 cm., 6 7/8 in. Estimate 600,000-800,000 HKD. Lot sold: 1,700,000 HKD  (166,358 EUR).  Photo Sotheby's

the rounded sides painted on the exterior in copper-red glaze with sprays of pomegranate, peach and plum, each with a single red fruit and leaves with incised veins covered with celadon glaze, the interior similarly decorated with a peach spray bearing two copper-red fruit with incised celadon-glazed leaves, the base inscribed with a six-character reign mark in underglaze blue within a double circle.

Exhibited: Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, The British Museum, London, 1994.

Litterature: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 2, no. 735.

Note: This subtle combination of copper-red fruits with celadon-green foliage is extremely rare and this bowl is one of only two examples that appear to be recorded in this style of decoration. Given this highly effective, pleasing combination of colours, such rarity is surprising and may probably be explained with the difficulty to achieve a satisfactory result with both these high-firing glazes. The iron-based celadon-green glaze was in the Kangxi period (AD 1662-1722) sometimes used in combination with underglaze copper-red and cobalt-blue, but on the present piece the copper-red is also used as a glaze, and associations of copper-red and iron-green glazes are otherwise unknown on Qing porcelain. 

The companion bowl in the Palace Museum, Beijing, on which the copper red appears to have fired less successfully, is illustrated in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang Qingdai yuyao ciqi [Qing porcelains from the Imperial kilns preserved in the Palace Museum], Beijing, 2005, vol. II, pl. 186 (fig. 1).

Yongzheng bowls are well known with copper-red fruit only, and occasionally foliage was added in underglaze cobaltblue. 

Compare, for example, a Yongzheng stem bowl with red fruit and blue foliage in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang gu taoci ciliao xuancui [Selection of ancient ceramic material from the Palace Museum], Beijing, 2005, vol. II, pl. 128; or another in the National Museum, Beijing, included in Zhongguo Guojia Bowuguan guancang wenwu yanjiu congshu / Studies on the Collections of the National Museum of China. Ciqi juan [Porcelain section], Qingdai [Qing dynasty], Shanghai, 2007, pl. 41.

Sotheby's. The Meiyintang Collection, Part III - An Important Selection of Imperial Chinese Porcelains, Hong Kong | 04 avr. 2012www.sothebys.com