Lot 51. A copper-red and gilt-decorated bottle vase, Qing dynasty, Kangxi period (1662-1722). Estimate HKD 180,000 — 250,000 (20,320 - 28,223 EUR). Lot Sold 2,480,000 HKD (279,971 EUR). Photo: Sotheby's.

heavily potted, the pear-shaped body rising from a stepped splayed foot to a slender neck flaring gently at the rim, painted with three recumbent mythical beasts in soft copper-red silhouettes shading to a paler red and mottled with emerald-green, their eyes picked out in underglaze blue and the details highlighted in gilding over the glaze, the rim gilt - 24.8 cm, 9 3/4  in.

Provenance: Sotheby's London, 17th December 1956, lot 21 (£44). 
Bluett & Sons Ltd, London, 1956 (£44). 
Collection of Wilfried A. Evill (d. 1963), from 1956. 
Sotheby's London, 30th November 1965, lot 73 (£500). 
Bluett & Sons Ltd, London, 1965 (£500).
Collection of Roger Pilkington (1928-69), from 1965.

Note: Pear-shaped bottles with Buddhist lions or other animals in copper red are rare, and even rarer are those with additional gilt details over the glaze. The present piece is decorated beneath the clear glaze with a copper-red glaze design instead of underglaze-red painting, a technique that can only achieve silhouettes without further details, which is why the gilt details were added. The technique stems from the Yongle period (1403-24) of the Ming dynasty but was rarely used after the Xuande period (1426-35), and here revived in the Kangxi reign (1662-1722). A few related copper-red examples are known in varying sizes, such as the vases included in the exhibition The Wonders of the Potter’s Palette, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1984, cat. no. 9. A very similar bottle in the National Palace Museum, Taipei was included in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of K'ang-Hsi, Yung-Cheng and Ch'ien-Lung Porcelain Ware from the Ch'ing Dynasty in the National Palace Museum, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1986, cat. no. 6; another was illustrated in Oriental Ceramics from Private Collections, Groningen, 1982, cat. no. 79.

A bottle with similar red designs, but no gilding and smaller in size, was sold in our New York rooms, 19th September 2001, lot 165. A mallet-shaped bottle with very similar red motifs and gilding was sold in our London rooms, 9th July 1974, lot 276, and again in these rooms, 26th October 1993, lot 211. A mallet bottle with similar motifs but no gilding was sold at Christie’s London, 19th April, 1983, lot 354. Compare also a bottle with designs of a Buddhist lion (suanni), a buffalo and a winged unicorn (xiezhi), in greyish-red colour and no gilding, illustrated in Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1998, no. 79.