A rare wucai 'lotus scroll' tripod censer and cover, Wanli marks and period (1573-1620)
Lot 13. A rare wucai 'lotus scroll' tripod censer and cover, Wanli marks and period (1573-1620). Estimate 40,000 — 60,000 USD. Lot sold 50,000 USD. Photo Sotheby's.
formed of three sections, the censer body of low cylindrical form supported on three ruyi-form feet below a flanged rim, vividly painted around the exterior with foliate lotus scrolls with blossoms in blue, red and white, between lotus sprays on the feet, and a blue-ground classic scroll at the rim, the interior fitted with a dish-shaped porcelain liner decorated with fruiting and flowering branches of peach enclosed in lobed panels against a blue lattice ground, inscribed with the six-character mark, further surmounted by a domed reticulated cover with blue and red diapers within a border of detached classic scroll segments and a composite floral scroll around the sides, all divided by line borders, the base partially glazed and inscribed in a countersunk medallion with the second six-character mark within double circles (3). Diameter 8 5/8 in., 21.8 cm
Provenance: Collection of Emil Hultmark (1872-1943), Stockholm, Sweden.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 13th November 1990, lot 148.
Christie's New York, 21st March 2002, lot 173.
Literature: Leopold Reideister, Ming-Porzellane ind schwedischen Sammlungen, Berlin, Leipzig, 1935, pl. 46(c).
Note: A Wanli censer in the Tokyo National Museum of this very rare form and with the same painting, with a pierced cover, four free-standing animals around the rim of the liner and two broad strap handles rising from the tripod base, is illustrated by Daisy Lion-Goldschmidt, Ming Porcelain, London, 1978, pl. 228, who notes that the shape is inspired by archaic bronze ding of the Eastern Zhou period. Another tripod base, lacking a cover or liner, is illustrated in Idemitsu Bijutsukan zōhin zuroku. Chūgoku tōji / Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1987, pl. 765.
Sotheby's. Ming: The Intervention of Imperial Taste, New York, 14 mars 2017, 10:00 AM