Lot 834. An iron-red-ground blue and white 'garlic mouth' vase, Wanli period (1573-1619). Estimate USD 8,000 - USD 12,000. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2016.

The bulbous body and tall neck are decorated with birds in flight amidst pine trees, peony and bamboo, interrupted by a border of shaped panels of lotus and peach reserved on a diaper ground on the shoulder. The garlic-form mouth is molded in the form of rows of overlapping lotus petals. 17 ½ in. (44.2 cm.) high

Provenance: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accessioned in 1919 (Rogers Fund).

Notes: Wanli vases of similar shape, with this distinctive garlic-from mouth molded as rows of overlapping lotus petals, but decorated in the wucai palette with formalized lotus scroll, include the example from the Idemitsu Museum illustrated in The Pursuit of the Dragon, Seattle Art Museum, 1988, no. 72; the example illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. I, Tokyo, 1976, p. 304, no. 909; and the vase from the Benjamin F. Edwards III Collection, sold at Christie’s New York, 20 January 2004, lot 27.

The rich iron-red ground of this vase is also very unusual, forming a unifying background for the somewhat dense underglaze blue decoration, and may have been inspired by the solid turquoise ground of the earlier cloisonné enamel vases.

Christie's. Collected in America: Chinese Ceramics from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 15 September 2016, New York, Rockefeller Plaza