A pair of very rare famille rose 'Pronk'-style wine coolers, Qianlong period, circa 1736-1740. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.

Each vessel is of oval bombé form, and is finely enamelled around the exterior with a lively lakeside scene of two swans on rocks among water reeds, one calmly composed, the other ferociously flapping his wings and honking at a partridge in flight, all below a band of slender waisted columns and stylised lappets. The wide slightly everted rim is decorated with a wide band of pink trellis-pattern, and the interior is enamelled with a cluster of fish, and flowering plants beside ducks and storks, the well with several songbirds. 25 ¼ in. (65 cm.) wide. Estimate £30,000 – £50,000 ($50,370 - $83,950)

Notes: The Dutch draughtsman, Cornelis Pronk (1691-1754), was commissioned by directors of the Dutch East India Company in 1734 to produce designs to be transferred on to Chinese porcelain, which they hoped would be more successful than Chinese designs. However, due to the expense of transferring his designs onto porcelain, the volume of Pronk's work is relatively small, and his designs ceased in 1738.

Although the design on these wine coolers is not a known design by Pronk, the shape and size are almost identical to those on which Pronk's designs were used, and it is quite likely that these were alternative designs produced in the same workshop. For a wine cooler of identical size and design to the present lot, but decorated in blue and white, see the example sold in these Rooms on 6 April 1998, lot 45.

For examples of wine coolers with known Pronk designs, see C.J.A. Jörg, Pronk Porcelain, Porcelain after Designs by Cornelis Pronk, Groninger and Haags Museums, April-August 1980, catalogue no.52 for a famille rose basin from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, decorated in the interior with 'The Archer', also illustrated by Jörg, and van Campen, Chinese Ceramics in the Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1997, 1997, p.286, no.332, together with a blue, white and gilt version as no.333, and by D.F. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Chinese Export Porcelain – Chine de Commande, London, 1974, no.123. Another famille rose basin decorated in the interior with 'The Doctors' Visit', sold in these Rooms, 9 and 10 November 1983, lot 777, and was illustrated by A. du Boulay, Christie’s Pictorial History of Chinese Ceramics, Oxford, 1984, p.262, fig.2. In the Rijksmuseum example, there is a close similarity between the decoration around the spreading foot and that on the feet in the present lot. However, a far more striking resemblance can be found on the 'Doctors' Visit' example given above and the present lot: namely the use of very bold gadroon-like lappets on the exterior of the basins just below the rims.

Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 13 May 2014, London, King Street - http://www.christies.com/