A blue and white 'Bagua' bowl, Kangxi six-character mark in underglaze blue within a double circle and of the period  (1662-1722). Estimate $60,000 – $80,000. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2015  

The thinly potted bowl is decorated on the exterior with bagua trigrams symbolizing the eight natural phenomena, above a band of crested waves and the ring foot, and on the interior with a taijitu symbol within a double-line border repeated at the rim. 4¾ in. (12 cm.) diam.

Provenance: Private collection, Europe, acquired in Hong Kong, c. 1950s. 

Notes: A pair of similar bowls is illustrated in Chinese Porcelain, The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong, 1987, pl. 50, where it is noted that the Eight Trigrams, bagua, invented by the legendary Fuxi in remote antiquity and adopted by the Daoists during the Ming period, are rarely found on Qing dynasty porcelain.

Other examples include a bowl in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Qing Shunzhi Kangxi chao qinghua ci, Beijing, 2005, no. 118, and another from the Goldschmidt Collection, formerly in the collections of E. and J. Baerwald, Berlin and J. Post, Amsterdam, sold at Sotheby's London, 17 December 1980, lot 654 and again at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 13 November 1990, lot 6.

Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 17 - 18 September 2015, New York, Rockefeller Plaza