Lot 3683. A copper-red and underglaze-blue vase, fanghu, Qing dynasty, 18th century, 15.5 cm, 6 1/8  in. Estimate 800,000 — 1,200,000 HKD. Lot sold 1,500,000 HKD. Photo: Sotheby's.

finely painted on the front and back with a pair of swooping phoenix in bright copper red, amidst a peony meander of red blooms and underglaze-blue leafy stems, the sides decorated with a similar floral design, the neck flanked by a pair of animal-mask and mock ring handles, all between ruyi and lappet bands at the rim and base, the foot encircled with a pendent leaf band.

Provenance: Collection of Robert C. Bruce (1898-1953).
Sotheby's London, 12th May 1953, lot 131.
Collection of W.A. Evill.
Sotheby's London, 17th December 1980, lot 640.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 17th May 1989, lot 223.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 10th April 2006, lot 1680.

Literature: Soame Jenyns, Later Chinese Porcelain, London, 1951, pl. LXXXVI, fig. 2b.

Note: Another vase from the Bruce Collection, now in the City Art Gallery, Bristol, of the same design but decorated in famille-rose enamels and underglaze blue and with a Qianlong seal mark, was sold in our London rooms, 12th May 1953, lot 129, and is illustrated in Soame Jenyns, ibid., pl. LXXVI, fig. 2a, together with the present unmarked vase. See also a vase of similar form, sold at Christie's London, 12th December 1988, lot 327. Qianlong vases of this type are also known from copper-red decorated examples; see one with a Qianlong seal mark, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (III), Shanghai, 2000, pl. 176; another sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 29th November 1978, lot 281; and one sold in our London rooms, 12th June 2003, lot 183.

The decoration of a pair of flying phoenix confronting a 'flaming pearl' above a peony bloom may be found on Qianlong mark and period wares of different shape; for example, see a moonflask from the Matsuoka Art Museum, Tokyo, illustrated in Sekai toji zenshu/Ceramic Art of the World, vol. 15, Tokyo, 1983, pls 92-3. Vases of this form were also decorated with dragons, as seen on the vase sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30th April 2000, lot 600, painted in puce and underglaze-blue enamels.

Porcelain vases of this type may have been inspired by contemporary jade examples; see a finely carved white jade vase of this shape and same design of two phoenixes and flowers, attributed to the Qianlong period and from the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the exhibition The Refined Taste of the Emperor: Special Exhibition of Archaic and Pictorial Jades of the Ch'ing Court, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1996, cat. no. 25.