Lot 10. A Qingbai lobed stem cup, Yuan Dynasty; 12cm (4 3/4in) high. Estimate £3,000 - 5,000 (€3,600 - 6,000). Unsold. Photo Bonhams

The spreading lobed foot encircled by a twisted rope-like band beneath the body lobed to imitate petals and with fine vertical ribs on the exterior and on the opposing lobes on the interior, the rim finely incised around the interior lip and an applied six-pointed rosette in the well, all covered with thin glaze pooling to a bluish tinge, wood stand, Japanese box and cover.  (4).

Provenance: Carl Kempe Collection, no.652 (label)
Included in Sotheby's Paris, 12 June 2008, lot 32

Illustrated: B.Gyllensvärd, Chinese Ceramics in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1964, pl.652
The World's Great Collections: Oriental Ceramics, Vol.8, Tokyo, 1982, pl.200

Note: Lobed stem cups such as the present lot were produced from the Song dynasty, such as the broader cup with more squat stem from the Royal Ontario Museum illustrated by S.Pierson, Qingbai Ware: Chinese Porcelain of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, London, 2002, no.45, and continued into the 14th century; another example dated to the Yuan dynasty in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is illustrated ibid., no.46. Compare also a very similar cup in the Meiyintang Collection illustrated by R.Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, Vol.Four (I), London, 1994, no.1613, where the author notes that the applied motifs and beading may have been inspired by bodhisattva jewellery. A related cup shaped as a peach blossom and with beading also on the exterior was recovered from the Shinan wreck sunk in AD 1323: see The Shinan Wreck, 2006, Vol.III, pl.114.

Bonhams. FINE CHINESE ART. London, New Bond Street, 15 May 2014