Lot 118. A rare 'sweet-white' 'monk's cap' ewer, Ming dynasty, Yongle period (1403-1424), 19.5 cm, 7 3/4  in. Estimation 40,000 — 60,000 GBP. Lot sold 62,500 GBP. Photo: Sotheby's

the compressed globular body rising from a splayed foot to a flared cylindrical neck, surmounted by a galleried 'monk’s cap' rim with a small lug on the interior, the tall spout of semi-circular section extending the full length of the neck, the wide strap handle with a ruyi-shaped terminal and a ruyi-shaped tab on top, applied overall with a rich white glaze.

Provenance: Collection of Mr and Mrs P. McCulloh. 
Christie's New York, 19th March 2008, lot 577.

Note: White-glazed 'monk’s cap' ewers were made at the imperial porcelain kilns at Jingdezhen for the Yongle Emperor (1403-24) to be used in Tibetan Buddhist rituals performed either at court in the then capital, Nanjing, or in Tibet proper. The Emperor actively supported Tibetan Buddhism, and in 1407 he invited to the capital the most influential Tibetan lama, Halima (1384-1415) of the Karma-pa sect, to perform religious services for his deceased parents. For this occasion he commissioned lavish gifts from the imperial workshops. More than fifty porcelain ewers of this form, either incised or undecorated, were recovered from stratum five of the Yongle waste heaps of the Ming imperial kilns site, believed to date from around 1407, and are discussed in the catalogue to the exhibition Imperial Porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande Periods Excavated from the Site of the Ming Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1989, p. 62; and another in the Tibet Museum, Lhasa, was included in the exhibition Treasures from Snow Mountain. Gems of Tibetan Cultural Relics, Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, 2001, cat. no. 88.

'Monk’s cap' ewers derive their shape from Tibetan ewers made of metal or wood, which were probably placed in front of altars filled with provisions or with water for use in ablutions, as is suggested in a somewhat later Tibetan painted textile depicting Avalokiteshvara and other deities behind an altar set with bowls of fruit, a flower vase, pear-shaped bottles and a monk’s cap ewer, illustrated in the catalogue to the exhibition Defining Yongle. Imperial Art in Early Fifteenth-Century China, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005, cat. no. 36. The form of this ewer appears to have been produced in porcelain since the Yuan dynasty and became a standard vessel shape in the Yongle reign.

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, Londres, 10 mai 2017, 02:00 PM