Lot 1. An Outstanding ‘Guan’ Octagonal Vase, Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279); 21.9 cm., 8 5/8  in. Estimate Upon Request. Lot sold 113,880,000 HKD (14,600,000 USD) to the Long Museum, Shanghai - The Third Highest Price for Song Ceramics at Auction. © Sotheby's.

HONG KONG.- Sotheby’s Hong Kong Chinese Works of Art Spring Sales 2015 will take place on 7 April at Hall 5, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, led by an outstanding Southern Song ‘Guan’ Vase from a Japanese Collection (Expected to fetch in excess of HK$60 million / US$7.7 million) which has been unseen in the market for four decades, as well as two theme sales respectively dedicated to the Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors of the Qing dynasty, two of the greatest art patrons and collectors in Chinese history. Also noteworthy are a magnificent carved celadon, famille-rose and underglazed-blue ‘boys’ vase, the Robert H. Blumenfield collection of bamboo carvings in addition to imperial porcelains and works of art from a Hong Kong private collection. Altogether, the six sales will offer more than 250 lots with a total estimate of approximately HK$600 million / US$76 million*. 

Nicolas Chow, Sotheby’s Asia Deputy Chairman and International Head of Chinese Works of Art, said, “We are privileged to offer this season some of the most outstanding Chinese works of art to come to the market in recent history. The Southern Song Guan vase, a masterpiece of ceramic art, and the jade seal that the Yongzheng Emperor used to impress on his own calligraphy are worthy of the finest public or private collections.” 

Auction Highlights:

GUAN – FROM A JAPANESE COLLECTION. 

Lot 1. An Outstanding ‘Guan’ Octagonal Vase, Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279); 21.9 cm., 8 5/8  in. Estimate Upon Request. Lot sold 113,880,000 HKD (14,600,000 USD) to the Long Museum, Shanghai - The Third Highest Price for Song Ceramics at Auction. © Sotheby's.

superbly potted, of octagonal section, the compressed globular body rising from a short recessed foot to an angled shoulder encircled by a raised fillet and surmounted by a tall tapering neck elegantly sweeping to an everted flat mouthrim, exquisitely potted with two raised horizontal ribs above a faintly discernible protruding fillet encircling the base of the neck, the dark brown body unctuously veiled overall in a lustrous bluish-celadon glaze thinning at the extremities save for the unglazed footring, the glaze suffused with a network of luminous golden-beige crackles, two Japanese paulownia wood boxes.

Provenance: Collection of John Henry Levy (until 1975).
Sotheby’s London, 8th July 1975, lot 68.
Eskenazi Ltd., London.
Mayuyama & Co., Ltd. Tokyo.

Exhibited: The Arts of the Sung Dynasty, Oriental Ceramic Society, London, 1960, cat. no. 159.
The Ceramic Art of China, Oriental Ceramic Society and Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1971, cat. no. 102, illustrated pl. 67.
Bi no bi [The beauty of beauty], Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi, Tokyo, 1976, cat. no. 45.
Sō Gen no bijutsu [The art of Song and Yuan], Osaka Municipal Art Museum, Osaka, 1978, cat. no. 1-20.
Chūgoku no tōji/Special Exhibition of Chinese Ceramics, Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, 1994, cat. no. 174 (illustration mirrored). 

Literature: G.St.G.M. Gompertz, Celadon Wares, London, 1968, pl. 12.
W.B.R. Neave-Hill, Chinese Ceramics, Edinburgh, 1970, pl. 86.
Hasebe Gakuji, ed., Sekai tōji zenshu/Ceramic Art of the World, volume 12: S¿/Sung Dynasty, Tokyo, 1977, pls. 67 and 68.
Tōji taikei [Outlines of ceramics], vol. 36: Seiji [Celadon wares], Tokyo, 1978, pl. 19.
Sōgen no bijutsu [The art of the Song and Yuan], Tokyo, 1980, pl. 3.
G.St.G.M. Gompertz, Chinese Celadon Wares, London, rev. ed. 1980, col. pl. F.
Deng Heying and Tang Junjie, Nan Song guanyao [Guan Ware of the Southern Song], Hangzhou, 2008, p. 120 top left.
Giuseppe Eskenazi with Hajni Elias, A Dealer's Hand. The Chinese Art World through the Eyes of Giuseppe Eskenazi, London, 2012, pl. 265.

Note: Guan yao, the fabled ‘official ware’ specially created for the imperial court of the Southern Song (1127-1279) in Hangzhou in south China, is perhaps the most desirable and certainly one of the rarest types of Chinese ceramics. Its serenity and seeming simplicity could only be achieved through utmost sophistication. It showcases Chinese potters at the height of their ingenuity, technical know-how and aesthetic vision. Like great artists and artisans anywhere, they captured – perhaps inadvertently – the zeitgeist of the period in their creations. The works of art they conceived embodied the leitmotifs of China’s highly educated scholar-officials, the non-aristocratic ruling elite of the Song (960-1279).

The Song dynasty was marked by two contrasting Confucian concepts of thought, one conservative, personified in particular by Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072), who advocated a revaluation of ancient tradition as a source for moral principles and a guideline for righteous behavior; the other reformist, propagated by Wang Anshi (1021-1086), who proposed idealistic reforms to achieve an ideal social order and himself practiced an exemplary simple, frugal lifestyle.

In this climate, the baroque voluptuousness that had characterized the aesthetic landscape in the Tang dynasty (618-907) was no longer acceptable even at court and gave way to a more modest, stream-lined functionality. Luxury goods had to be sophisticated rather than just precious.

For the literati-scholars of the day the interaction with the past was not only romantic fascination but compelling necessity. In the words of James T.C. Liu "It was during the Sung [Song] that the ancient Confucian heritage evolved into the new pattern that was to permeate Chinese society for the next thousand years." The rituals of Antiquity, in which bronze vessels had played a central part, "expressed the society’s consciousness of its own identity and regulated, in an all-pervasive way, every need, every detail, indeed everything in human life, in accordance with a meaningful, aesthetic, harmonious, and satisfying moral and philosophical order."1

This attachment to a golden Chinese past only intensified after the foreign Jin (1115-1234) had conquered the Song capital and forced the court to move south to a city – modern Hangzhou – the emperor never fully identified with but merely considered the ‘temporary capital’. When the Palace Maintenance Office endeavoured to commission a new official ware for the Southern Song court, the modernity embodied by the sparse but exquisite Ru ware was taken as model, with its emphasis on tonal variation and patterns of crazing reminiscent of those provoked naturally in precious stones. New commissions of such ceramics suggested cultured patronage rather than wasteful consumption and at the same time conveyed an unbroken continuation of imperial taste and style from Northern (960-1127) to Southern Song. For shapes, the form of archaic ritual bronzes or jades provided the most important inspiration. Archaic bronzes and jades had begun to be excavated, researched and collected as symbols and witnesses of a blessed era of Chinese history, due to their central function in important state rituals in antiquity. The five most important examples of this ware in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, are in the form of a bronze zun, a massive bronze hu with tubular handles and a smaller one of similar form, a fang hu with tubular handles, and a jade cong.2

The present octagonal bottle form is not directly copied, but clearly based on late Bronze Age prototypes. This would have signalled at court a direct connection with the past and imbued the vessel with a significance a newly invented form could not have provided. An unusual type of circular bottle, hu, dating from the Han dynasty (206 BC - AD 220), might have provided inspiration, of related form with low body and tall neck, with engraved designs intersected by horizontal bands around neck and shoulder; an example is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession no. 2007.133 (fig. 1); another in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C., accession no. RLS 1997.48.831. Raised ribs appear, for example, around the neck of tall-necked bottles with a ‘garlic-head’ mouth, mostly of Qin dynasty (221-206 BC) date (see Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, accession no. RLS 1997.48.592, or an example sold in our London rooms, 20th June 2001, lot 182). The angularity was certainly modelled on bronze prototypes, where it appears in many forms, although perhaps not in this hushape. Since Chinese ceramics are largely fashioned on the wheel rather than in moulds, a multi-facetted shape such as this did not come naturally to the potters, but required awkward treatment, since the circular vessel that was assembled from individually thrown horizontal sections, then had to be carefully cut into shape once it was leather-hard, prior to firing.

Engraved bronze vase, hu, Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220), ca. 1st century B.C.–1st century A.D. Purchase, Bequest of Dorothy Graham Bennett, 2007, 2007.133. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

The exquisite, unctuous glaze of the present vase with its smooth pleasing texture, milky-blue tint and subtle gloss was achieved through gradual application of multiple layers and presumably successive firings. The thick coating thus formed softly envelopes the angular shape, rounding off all sharp angles to create an object that invites being held. The distinct web of veins of the large-scale crackle, probably provoked by a well-controlled cooling process after the last firing and subsequent staining, acts like a design formed by nature, giving the whole piece an aspect as if carved out of one large boulder of a fine jade-like stone.

The dark blackish-brown body visible at the foot and vaguely perceptible through the glaze at raised edges, which is characteristic of Southern Song guan ware, adds depth to the glaze and gravitas to the whole object, as it subtly accentuates the shape. In the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), when guan ware was much copied by the Jingdezhen kilns of Jiangxi province, this dark stoneware body was generally imitated by coating Jingdezhen’s white porcelain with a blackish-brown slip before glazing.

Guan ware is mentioned and lauded already in contemporary texts of the Southern Song period. According to those texts, Xiuneisi, the Palace Maintenance Office, set up a kiln in the new capital, modern Hangzhou, to produce wares modelled on the official ware of the Northern Song. Somewhat later, another kiln at Hangzhou produced a similar but lesser ware. The basic message of these reports appears now supported by archaeological research, since two different kiln sites have been explored at Hangzhou, one at Wuguishan, south of the former Imperial city, the other at Laohudong on the site formerly occupied by the Imperial city.3 Because of their locations and the different qualities of the sherds recovered, the Wuguishan kiln has been interpreted as the (lesser) Jiaotanxia kiln, the Laohudong kiln as the exalted Xiuneisi manufactory. 

It is difficult, however, to link the best examples of guan ware to either kiln site. In quality and beauty they seem to surpass not only the fragments found at the Jiaotanxia but also those from the supposed Xiuneisi kiln site at Laohudong. It is still too early to say whether such outstanding examples were made there, but have not turned up at the excavation site, since nothing reaching this quality would ever have been discarded; or else, whether they may have been made at yet another, superior and perhaps smaller kiln in Hangzhou as yet undiscovered, which may have been active for a shorter period. Compare a fragment of a related circular bottle excavated at the Laohudong kiln site, included in the exhibition Maboroshi no mei yō. Nan Sō Shūnaishi kan yō/Temporary Exhibition: Southern Song Xiuneisi Guan Ware. Archaeological Findings from the Kiln site at Laohudong, Hangzhou, Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 2010, cat. no. 05 (fig. 2).

Guanyao vase, Southern Song dynasty, excavated at the Laohudong kiln site. After: Maboroshi no mei yō. Nan Sō Shūnaishi kan yō/Temporary. Exhibition: Southern Song Xiuneisi Guan Ware. Archaeological Findings fromthe Kiln site at Laohudong, Hangzhou, Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 2010, cat. no. 05

Song dynasty examples are exceedingly rare even in the Palace Museums of Taipei and Beijing, which contain the former imperial collection. Vessels of top-quality guan ware are today virtually all in museum collections. Most closely related is the famous octagonal bottle of similar form reputedly from the Chinese imperial collection, thereafter in the collections of F.C. Harrison, Sir A. Daniel Hall, Robert C. Bruce and Edward T. Chow, later in the collection of Ataka Eiichi and today in the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, sold twice in our London rooms, 1st July 1943, lot 70 and 12th May 1953, lot 60, and at Christie’s London, 12th October 1970, lot 77, frequently illustrated and exhibited, and included side by side with the present example in the OCS exhibition The Ceramic Art of China, London, 1971, cat. no. 103 (illustrated pl. 68) (fig. 3). That bottle is slightly smaller than the present piece and shows a much more faint crackle.

Guan ware octagonal vase, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka. © Christie's Image Ltd 1970. 

Only two other vessels representing Song guan ware at its best have ever appeared at auction: the fang hu with tubular handles from the collection of Mrs. Alfred Clark, sold in our London rooms, 25th March 1975, lot 101, published in Sekai tōji zenshū/Ceramic Art of the World, vol. 12, Tokyo, 1976, col.pl. 71; and the mallet-shaped Yujinyuan bottle sold in these rooms, 11th April 2008, lot 2601.

Crackled bluish-green glazed ceramics of guan type became one of China's most widely admired and most avidly imitated ceramic styles. Guan ware was copied already in its own time by the Longquan kilns in Zhejiang province, and ever since has inspired a vast production of crackled wares, which still continues today. Many Ming dynasty (1368-1644) writers have evoked the fame of Southern Song guan ware and important copies, but generally of small size, were made at the imperial kilns of Jingdezhen, both in the Xuande period (1426-35) and in the Chenghua reign (1465-87). In the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), the Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1723-35) sent originals from the imperial collection to Jingdezhen as models to copy, and a vase in the shape of the present example was probably among them.

The Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-95), who was a particularly avid collector, received a large number of tribute pieces, which entered the imperial collection, were accepted as genuine Song guan wares and sometimes even provided with imperial inscriptions. These tributes to the Qing court and the Qianlong Emperor's inscriptions have for a long time blurred our vision of the true identity of Southern Song guan ware. Only recently, later copies among them have been identified as such. The National Palace Museum exhibition in 1989, for example, contained 143 items of so-called guan ware, including thirty vases, of which only four were considered to be genuine Southern Song guan wares.4 

John Henry Levy, who died in 1976, was the son of the well known collectors of Chinese ceramics, the. Hon. Mrs. Nellie Ionides and her first husband Walter Henry Levy, but was an important collector in his own right. The present bottle was the highlight of the 1975 Sotheby's sale, which included a major part of his collection.

_____________________________________________

1 James T.C. Liu, Ou-yang Hsiu. An Eleventh-Century Neo-Confucianist, Stanford, 1967, p. vii, and p. 163.
2 See the Special Exhibition of Sung Dynasty Kuan Ware at the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1989, cat. Nos. 2 and 8-10; and China at the Inception of the Second Millennium: Art and Culture of the Sung Dynasty, 960-1279, Taipei, 2000, cat. no. I-31. 
3 Nan Song guan yao/Southern Song Governmental Porcelain Workshop, Beijing, 1996; Du Zhengxian, ed., Hangzhou Laohudong yaozhi ciqi jingxuan [Selection of porcelains from the Laohudong kiln sites in Hangzhou], Beijing, 2002; Zhang Zhenchang, ed., Nan Song guan yao wenji/A Collection of Essays on Southern Song Dynasty Guan Kiln, Beijing, 2004.
4 This view is expressed by Ts'ai Ho-pi in the catalogue, but in veiled terms, see Special Exhibition of Sung Dynasty Kuan Ware at the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1989.

YONGZHENG - TREASURES FROM THE AGE OF HARMONY AND INTEGRITY 

The Yongzheng Emperor is celebrated among historians and connoisseurs as a distinguished aesthete and art patron. Under his brief thirteen-year rule, the Imperial workshops within the Forbidden City came into full bloom by virtue of the Emperor’s meticulous involvement in the production and quality control. The most luxurious materials were painstakingly gathered, the most skilled craftsmen summoned from afar and techniques perfected to levels never to be surpassed. 

The present sale pays homage to the exacting eye and elegant taste of the Yongzheng Emperor . The nineteen objects selected here encompass some of the finest porcelain produced in Jingdezhen, and include as a group of exceedingly rare works of art – jade, soapstone, crystal, agate, glass, bronze, lacquer – manufactured in close proximity of the Emperor at the court and under his direct guidance. Every piece in the sale is inscribed with a reign mark, or of a type documented as being directly commissioned by the Emperor. It is unprecedented to have assembled a group of such quality and rarity. 

Lot 102. An Extremely Rare Imperial White Jade ‘Yongzheng Yubi Zhi Bao’ Seal with original Ivory-Inlaid Box and Cover. The seal: Qing Dynasty, Kangxi Period. The seal face: Qing Dynasty, Yongzheng Period. Seal 7.5 x 6.1 x 6.1 cm; box and cover 9.1 x 9.1 x 8.6 cm. Est. HK$30 – 40 million / US$3.8 – 5.1 million. Lot sold 104,920,000 HKD. Photo Sotheby's.

This jade seal with its original box, one of only five recorded jade examples from the Yongzheng reign, ranks among the most important works of art of the period to come to light in recent history. The seal face translates as ‘Treasure penned by his Majesty the Yongzheng Emperor’ and the seal is impressed on his own calligraphy and paintings. It is exceptional to find such a seal preserved with its original box, which, like the seal itself, is recorded in the archives of the Forbidden City. 

Lot 108. A Fine and Superbly Painted Blue and White ‘Dragon’ Vase, Mark and Period of Yongzheng; height 38.6 cm. Est. HK$40 – 60 million / US$5.1 – 7.7 million. Lot sold 75,800,000 HKD. Photo Sotheby's.

This magnificent dragon vase epitomises the Yongzheng Emperor’s admiration for early Ming dynasty porcelain and his endeavour for aesthetic excellence. The dragon motif is emblematic of the Emperor and, by extension, imperial power. The brilliant deep blue cobalt, applied to replicate the ‘heaping and piling’ effect of early Ming underglaze blue designs, reflects the high level of technical achievement of the kilns in Jingdezhen during the period. No other example is known from the period. 

QIANLONG – POET AND COLLECTOR 

Prince Hongli (1711-1799), the Qianlong Emperor, is one of the most prolific poets and writers in China’s literary history, with more than 40,000 poems composed by him. He is also recorded in history as one of the most zealous collectors, with an art collection of enormous scope and size, which included antiques, archaistic works and contemporary art. His enthusiasm is reflected in the numerous inscriptions compiled in anthologies, and in his commemorative poems and compositions preserved on the surface of the finest paintings, calligraphy, porcelains and jades. The present sale offers four pieces formerly in the imperial collection of the Qianlong Emperor. 

An Exceptionally Large and Extremely Rare Dated Zitan Mounted Archaic Jade Bi Disc Jade. Disc: Eastern Han Dynasty. Stand: Qing Dynasty, Qianlong Period, dated in accordance with 1770; height 30 cm; disc 23.8 cm. Est. HK$30 – 40 million / US$3.8 – 5.1 million. Photo Sotheby's.

The superb Eastern Han jade bi disc features painstakingly carved and reticulated dragon and phoenix motifs. The carved words Yan Nian (‘elongated lifespan’) stand for the longevity of the emperor as well as the eternal prosperity of Qianlong’s reign, a symbolic reflection of his quest for legitimacy as a ruler and his right to the Mandate of Heaven. The jade disc itself is of outstanding quality and superbly carved. Inscribed, dated and preserved with its original zitan stand, it is arguably the greatest inscribed work of art from the Qianlong Emperor's collection that remains in private hands. 

IMPERIAL PORCELAIN AND WORKS OF ART FROM A HONG KONG PRIVATE COLLECTION 

This sale presents a selection of 24 objects from an Asian private collection, ranging from imperial porcelain from the Xuande period, in the Ming dynasty, to Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong in the Qing dynasty. There is also a number of rare imperial works of art, kesi and albums.

An Imperial Kesi Album of Poems On ‘West Lake’, Mark and Period of Qianlong; 37.8 by 25.7 cm. Est. HK$4 – 6 million / U$510,000 – 770,000. Photo Sotheby's.

The Qianlong Emperor was particularly drawn to the beauty and elegance of the landscapes in southern China. When revisiting, he would compose poems, and then upon returning to the Forbidden City, would order imperial albums of all the poems he had composed on them. 

A Fine and Rare Celadon-Glazed Vase, Seal Mark And Period Of Qianlong; height 37.9 cm. Est. HK$8 – 12 million / US$1 – 1.5 million. Photo Sotheby's.

Of exceptional graceful form covered with a luminous celadon glaze, this vase is an impressive example of the remarkable technical developments made to meet the specific taste of the Qianlong Emperor, which was characterised by the imitation of antiques, innovation and flair. Its simplicity of form and absence of decoration was a new stylistic trend resulted from research into celebrated Song glazes. Published in the collection of Taji Shuichi in Tokyo in 1983, it has exceptional provenance.

IMPORTANT CHINESE WORKS OF ART

The sale will feature a diverse range of important Imperial porcelain and works of art from the Ming and Qing dynasties, highlighted by a magnificent carved-celadon, famille-rose and underglaze-blue ‘boys’ vase. 

A Magnificent Carved Celadon-Glazed, Famille-Rose and Underglaze-Blue ‘Boys’ Vase, Seal Mark and Period of Qianlong; height 44 cm. Est. HK$50 – 70 million / US$6.4 – 9 million. Photo Sotheby's.

This exceptional vase is a tour-de-force, combining celadon glaze with relief design, famille-rose and underglaze-blue painting. Acquired by the currently owner in France twenty years ago, it is extremely rare with no other comparable published example, and is of the uttermost refinement. The subject of children at play was favoured for its auspiciousness inspired by paintings by court artists such as Jin Tingbiao. 

THE ROBERT H. BLUMENFIELD COLLECTION OF BAMBOO CARVINGS

Passionately collected over 30 years by the American collector Robert H. Blumenfield, this is an outstanding assemblage of bamboo carvings, reflecting the superb output of literati taste bamboo produced in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Encompassing all the major categories, the collection includes figure carvings, brushpots, incense burners and exquisite miniatures produced for the scholar’s desk.

A Superb Carved Bamboo ‘Eight Daoist Immortals’ Brushpot. Attributed to Gu Jue, Qing Dynasty, Kangxi Period; height 17 cm. Est. HK$2.5 – 3.5 million / US$320,000 – 450,000. Photo Sotheby's.

*Estimates do not include buyer’s premium and prices achieved include the hammer price plus buyer’s premium.

A Chinese Guan Vase of the Southern Song Dynasty is shown to the media in Hong Kong on March 2, 2015. The rare vase is expected to fetch more than 60 million HKD (7.7 million USD) at Sotheby’s Hong Kong Chinese Works of Art Spring Sales 2015 which will take place on April 7, 2015. AFP PHOTO / Philippe Lopez.

A Sotheby's Hong Kong specialist Yongzheng Jade Seal. Photo: Sotheby's.