Lot 3007. A Ru-type peach washer, Seal mark and period of Qianlong (1736-1795); 25.1 cm., 9 7/8 in. Estimate 1,600,000 — 2,200,000 HKD. Lot sold 1,960,000 HKD (184,518 EUR). Photo: Sotheby's

the shallow flat-base washer potted in the shape of a peach with irregular incurved sides and a wavy profile, set to one side with a large ripe peach modelled in the round attached to a bent branch issuing two small leaves resting on the peach and another two extending onto the rim of the washer, covered overall in an unctuous greyish-blue glaze suffused with a fine network of caramel crackles, the base potted with a curved indented line running across it and inscribed with a six-character reign mark in underglaze blue, the mark encircled by four tiny spur marks revealing the greyish-brown body, wood stand.

Provenance: Collection of Mrs. James Alsdorf, Chicago.
Christie's Hong Kong, 23rd March 1993, lot 737.

Exhibited: Chinese Art from the Collection of James W. and Marilynn Alsdorf, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, 1970, cat. no. c70.

Literature: 20 Years in Hong Kong - Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art Highlights, Christie's, Hong Kong, 2006, p. 149.

Note: A Yongzheng prototype of this design, with a guan-type glaze and with a dark body visible through the glaze, from the Qing court collection, is in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Monochrome Porcelain, Hong Kong, 1999, pl. 207, together with a Qianlong piece with a white porcelain body, pl. 217, and a third washer with a crackled ge-type glaze but without reign mark, pl. 232, all slightly differently shaped. A further related washer was included in the exhibition Qing Imperial Monochromes. The Zande Lou Collection, Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, 2005, cat. no. 30.

Three Qianlong Ru-type brush washers of this type were sold in these rooms, one, 28th November 1978, lot 206, the second from the J.M. Hu Collection, 9th October 2012, lot 104, and the third from the Meiyintang collection, 7th April 2011, lot 37.

Sotheby's. Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, Hong Kong, 08 April 2014