A very rare Yixing stoneware archaistic 'elephant and vase' vessel. Inscribed Xu Youquan. Photo Bonhams.

Delicately potted standing four-square, with head and trunk raised forming the spout, carefully detailed with small eyes, wrinkled skin and tail flicked to one side, the back surmounted by a flaring archaistic zun-form vase above a ruyi-shaped drape, the underside of the belly incised with the two-character kaishu potter's signature, the stoneware of a cocoa-brown tone with lighter buff-coloured speckles. 17.3cm. long. Sold for HK$ 750,000 (€72,100)

Provenance: Sotheby's Parke Bernet Hong Kong, 24 May 1978, lot 322

Illustrated: The Appreciation of Cultured and Elegant Purple Clay Wares, Taipei, 2008, p.39, pl.8.

Xu Shiheng, whose designation or hao is Youquan, was active during the Wanli period, and was taught by Shi Dabin. Little is known about Xu Shiheng and only a brief account is recorded by Zhou Gaoqi (1596-1645) in his book, Collections of Yangxian Teapot: Masterworks. It states that Shiheng's father, an admirer of Shi Dabin's work, invited him to the family house. When Shi Dabin was challenged to use a lump of clay to make a cow from it, he hesitated but Shiheng took the clay from him and worked it into a cow with one leg bent on the ground. Amazed, Shi Dabin subsequently became his supervisor.

The present lot is a testament to the potter's skill in manipulating clay to model naturalistic animals. Compare a very similar 'elephant and vase' vessel, sold at Sotheby's Parke Bernet Hong Kong, 24 May 1978, lot 301. For a teapot dated to the early 17th century, also bearing the signature of Xu Youquan in the K. S. Lo collection, now in the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware, see Hong Kong Museum of Art ed. Yixing Purple Clay Wares - The K.S.Lo Collection, Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware, Hong Kong, 2002, p.59, pl.8, and another, from the Mr and Mrs Jimmy Sha Collection, was sold in these rooms, 24 November 2013, lot 104.

Bonhams. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART. Hong Kong, Admiralty, 26 May 2014