Lot 9.  A Fine Carved Pale Turquoise 'Kui Dragon' Bowl, Mark and period of Yongzheng (1723-1735); 15.2 cm., 6 in. Estimate 1,600,000 - 2,000,000 HKD. Lot sold 3,860,000 HKD. Photo Sotheby's

well potted, the shallow rounded sides rising from a slightly tapered foot to a flared rim, finely carved around the exterior with an archaistic bronze design of two highly stylized dragons in shallow relief on a ground of incised key-fret, below a plain band and a further key-fret border at the rim, all above a double fillet encircling the foot, the exterior covered with an attractive opaque enamel of light turquoise-blue colour, the interior reserved in white, the white base inscribed with a six-character reign mark within a double ring in underglaze blue

Exhibited: Evolution to Perfection. Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection/Evolution vers la perfection. Céramiques de Chine de la Collection Meiyintang, Sporting d’Hiver, Monte Carlo, 1996, cat. no. 193.

Literature: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 2, no. 911.

Note: Archaic bronzes were imitated in many other materials since the earliest times and while it was often the forms that were copied in ceramics, in the Qing dynasty in particular bronze decoration was an important source for porcelain design even on shapes and styles that are otherwise completely unrelated to early bronze vessels, like the present bowl. Archaistic dragon forms are here stylized to such a degree that they are recognizable mainly through the accompanying leiwen background pattern, which unmistakably refers to archaic bronze decoration.

A companion bowl, of the same shape and glaze colour, in the collection of Brian McElney was included in the Min Chiu Society exhibition Monochrome Ceramics of the Ming and Ch’ing Dynasties, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1977, cat. no. 53; another was sold at Christie’s London, 3rd December 1973, lot 339, and is illustrated in Anthony du Boulay, Christie’s Pictorial History of Chinese Art, Oxford, 1984, p. 222, fig. 6. A bowl of this design with a mint-green glaze was sold at Christie’s New York, 20th September 2005, lot 390.

Compare also a larger bowl with incised leiwen only under a similar pastel-turquoise glaze, also of Yongzheng mark and period, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang Qingdai yuyao ciqi[Porcelains from the Qing dynasty imperial kilns in the Palace Museum collection], Beijing, 2005, vol. I, part 2, pl. 211.

Sotheby's.  The Meiyintang Collection, Part IV - An Important Selection of Imperial Chinese Porcelains, Hong Kong, 09 oct. 2012