Lot 11. A Longquan celadon openwork vase, yuhuchunping. Yuan dynasty, 14th century; 23.5 cm., 9 1/4  in. Estimate 600,000 - 800,000 HKD Unsold. Courtesy Sotheby's

of compressed pear-shape form and oval section, rising from a splayed foot to a flared quatrefoil rim, set with two dragon-head loop handles suspending loose rings, the body carved in openwork revealing a narrow tubular body inside, with a fu ('happiness') and a shou ('long life') character on either side, each enclosed in a barbed medallion and flanked by the Flowers of the Four Seasons, with peony and camellia emerging from rockwork, and chrysanthemum and pomegranate rising from waves, the foot encircled by a key-fret border repeated at the base of the neck below a collar of upright plantain leaves, all richly applied with a vivid yellowish-green glaze thinning to white on the carved areas, the domed base glazed and the unglazed footring fired to brick red.

LITTERATURE: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1605.

NOTE: In the Yuan dynasty, potters in many ceramic manufactories aimed at adding interest to their monochrome products through complicated methods of forming and decorating. The present vase, with a double body and pierced outer walls is a piece that would have been highly demanding to produce. This openwork technique was in the Qianlong period (1736-95) revived on celadon-glazed porcelains.

Another vase of this design was sold at Sotheby’s New York, 20th March 2002, lot 121. Similar vases are much more common with the body carved but not pierced; compare a pair of vases in the Eumorfopoulos collection, published in R.L. Hobson, The George Eumorfopoulos Collection of Chinese, Corean and Persian Pottery and Porcelain, London, 1925-8, vol. 2, pl. XLII, no. B159, and a single vase in the Baur Collection, Geneva, illustrated in John Ayers, The Baur Collection Geneva: Chinese Ceramics, Geneva, 1968-74, vol. 1, pl. A114.

This design continued well beyond the Yuan dynasty, but without the openwork. Two related vases, one excavated from the early Ming, the other the mid-Ming stratum of the Fengdongyan kiln site at Dayao, Longquan, are illustrated in Longquan Dayao Fengdongyan yaozhi chutu ciqi [Porcelains excavated from the Fengdongyan kiln site at Dayao, Longquan], Beijing, 2009, pls. 112 and 172.

Sotheby's. The Meiyintang Collection, Part V - An Important Selection of Imperial Chinese Porcelains. Hong Kong | 08 avr. 2013