Lot 3092. A rare wucai 'Prunus Tree' month cup, Mark and period of Kangxi (1662-1722); 6.5 cm, 2 1/2  in. Estimate 800,000 — 1,000,000 HKD. Lot sold 1,000,000 HKD. Photo: Sotheby's.

delicately potted of deep 'U'-shape with flared rim and a short straight foot, painted on one side in the wucaipalette in underglaze blue and overglaze enamels with a prunus tree's two gnarled branches bearing white blossoms with yellow stamens and dark red calyxes, with some small shoots rising from the ground, a tall rock behind, a clump of narcissus and another low rock to one side, and a younger flowering tree on the other, representing the eleventh month, the reverse inscribed with a poem relating to the flowering tree in front, followed by the seal shang ('to appreciate'), the base inscribed in underglaze blue with a six-character reign mark within double circles.

Provenance: Collection of H.M. Knight.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 2nd May 1991, lot 98.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 27th April 1999, lot 423

Exhibited: Oosterse Schatten: 4,000 Jaar Aziatische Kunst, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1954, cat. no. 357

Note: Month cups depicting seasonal flowers accompanied by pertinent two-lined poems represent a classic design of the Kangxi period. This delicately potted piece depicts the prunus tree of the eleventh month, and the poem reads and can be translated as follows: 

Su yan xue ning shu, qing xiang feng man zhi.

'Simple beauty like a tree frozen with snow.
Branches moving in the wind full of clear fragrance.'

A full set of month cups, in the Palace Museum, Bejing, is illustrated in Kangxi. Yongzheng. Qianlong. Qing Porcelain from the Palace Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1989, p. 65, pl. 48; a set from the Sir Percival David collection and now in the British Museum, London, is published in the Illustrated Catalogue of Qing Enamelled Wares in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, (rev. ed.), London, 1991, pl. 815; another in the Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo, is included in Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1987, pl. 221.

Two cups of this month, from the collection of Edward T. Chow, were sold in these rooms, 19th May 1981, lot 567, and 25th November 1980, lot 147, the latter sold again, 17th May 1988, lot 103; and another from the Goldschmidt collection was sold twice in these rooms, 15th November 1988, lot 233, and again, 13th November 1990, lot 11.

Sotheby's. Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art. Hong Kong, 08 Oct 2013