A blue and white 'Mandarin Duck and Lotus' stembowl, Yuan dynasty. Estimate 1,500,000 — 2,000,000  HKD. Unsold. Photo courtesy Sotheby's

with deep rounded sides resting on a tall hollow triple-ribbed foot, the exterior bordered decorated in vibrant shades of cobalt-blue with a band of lotus scrolls above an upright stylised ruyi-lappet border, the interior centred with a medallion enclosing a pair of mandarin ducks swimming in a lotus pond densely detailed with large lotus blossoms and pads, all within a 'classic scroll' band below the rim; 17.7 cm., 7 in.

Provenance: Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 20th May 1981, lot 684.
David Lin & Co.

Notes: Blue and white stembowls of this rare form, modelled after bamboo nods, belong to a special group of such wares produced in the Yuan dynasty. A closely related example in the Gao’an Museum, where the exterior is painted with a chrysanthemum scroll design and the interior bears a fourteen-character inscription couplet in cursive script, denoting that the bowl was used for drinking wine, see Yuan and Ming Blue and White Ware from Jiangxi, Hong Kong, 2002, pl. 16.

Compare also another stembowl of this form and design, but severely misfired from the Hutian kiln site in Jingdezhen, illustrated in The Fung Ping Shan Museum ed., Ceramic Finds from Jingdezhen Kilns, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1992, cat. no. 160. See also a stem bowl of comparable shape and external design, but painted with a double phoenix motif to the interior, unearthed from the Almalik city site in Yili, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region illustrated in the Shanghai Museum exhibition Splendors in Smalt: Art of Yuan Blue-and-Porcelain, Shanghai, 2012, cat. no. 42. The stembowl found in Xinjiang is also somewhat misfired and looks unclear and much inferior to the present stem bowl. The fact that this less than satisfactory piece was nonetheless delivered from the kilns in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, in south China over thousands of kilometres to Xinjiang in the northwest border region, documents the difficulties to achieve satisfactory results, and the value of Yuan blue and white porcelains such as the present piece.

For two other stem bowls of similar form but much simpler decoration, one fired with Persian inscription, unearthed from the Red Guard Cinema kilnsite, Jingdezhen, see Shane McCausland, The Mongol Century: Visual Cultures of Yuan China, 1260-1368, London, 2015, pls. 142-143. Also cited in this book is a wine jar from the Liaoning Provincial Museum with underglaze blue designs including mandarin ducks in lotus pond similar to the present stem bowl, pl. 145.

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Works of Art, Hong Kong, 07 avr. 2015