Lot 3658. A rare blue and white 'Phoenix' circular box and cover, Mark and period of Wanli (1573-1619); 28.8 cm., 11 3/8  in. Estimate 600,000 — 800,000 HKD (68,974 — 91,965 EUR). Lot sold 2,000,000 HKD (229,912 EUR). Photo Sotheby's.

of circular form with straight sides, the slightly domed top of the cover freely painted in varying shades of cobalt-blue with two confronting phoenix with outstretched wings on opposite sides of a blooming peony against a dense background of leafy flower scrolls, the sides of the box and cover similarly decorated with a continuous frieze of four phoenix flying to the left amidst floral scrolls, the flat base left unglazed save for a central countersunk roundel enclosing an underglaze blue six-character mark within a frame of ruyi motifs.

Provenance: Hirano Kotoken, 1978.

Notes: Wanli mark and period boxes of this form and design are rare and are more commonly known painted with dragons, as seen on a box in the Umezawa Kinenkan Museum, Tokyo, illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, Tokyo, 1976, vol. 1, pl. 961; and another, painted with a dragon and lingzhi design, offered in this sale, lot 3657. See also two boxes of this form painted with a dragon and phoenix in polychrome enamels; the first also in the Umezawa Kinenkan Museum, included in the exhibition Imperial Overglaze-Enamelled Wares in the Late Ming Dynasty, Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 1995, cat. no. 32; and the second from the collections of Hon. F. Ross de Moleyns and J.C. Gilmore, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 29th April 2002, lot 561.

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, Hong Kong, 07 oct. 2015, 02:30 PM