Lot 49. An Inscribed Cinnabar Lacquer Songhua Inkstone Set, Mark and Period of Yongzheng, Dated 1724; 12.9 cm., 5 1/8  in. Estimate 800,000 — 1,200,000 HKD. Lot sold 1,960,000 HKD. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014

of circular form with straight sides supported on five short narrow feet, the cover with a slightly raised top finely incised and gilt with a twelve-column inscription titled Shiyan fu ('Ode to ink stone') and dated to the ninth day of the ninth month of the second year of the Yongzheng reign (1724), followed by two seals bijing ('excellent writing') and momiao ('incredible ink'), the interior lacquered in black, the sage-green Songhua stone typically streaked with golden veins, finely carved with a smoothly polished central ink grinding surface encircled by a groove and a continuous leafy scroll in low relief around the rounded edge, the recessed base inscribed with a four-character incised reign mark.

Provenance: 2000 Years of Chinese Lacquer. Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong and the Art Gallery, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1993, cat. no. 104.
Layered Beauty: The Baoyizhai Collection of Chinese Lacquer, Art Museum, Institute of Chinese Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2010, cat. no. 16.

Note: The box is incised with an inscription Shiyan fu ('Ode to Inkstone'), which by tradition was composed by the Tang scholar Zhang Shaobao. Inscribed on the box in 1724 right at the end of the Yongzheng reign, it encapsulates the essential nature of the inkstone within.

For another Yongzheng reign-marked Songhua inkstone in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, see A Special Exhibition of Sunghua Inkstone Comparable to the Best Tuan and She Inkstones, Taipei, 1993, pp. 143-145, cat. no. 48. The texture of the stone and style of carving, especially the fluidity of the treatment of the leaves, is close to that on the current inkstone, as is the treatment of the incised mark.

Songhua stone belongs to the sedimentary rock family and is named after the Songhua River in Jilin province. For its natural colouration in the brown and green palette that gives the stone many decorative possibilities combined with its smooth surface texture, it was ideally suited for the making of inkstones. Its association with Jilin in the Manchu motherland made it particularly popular with the Qing rulers. From the Kangxi period, it became a staple of the Palace Workshop carvers.

 Zhou Nanquan in 'Songhuashi yan [Songhua Inkstone]', Wenwu, 1980, no. 1, pp. 86-87, notes that in Qianlong's poetry collection, Shengjing tuchan zayong shier shou ('Twelve Miscellaneous Poems on the Native Products of Shengjing'), the emperor praises the stone as 'Songhua yu' (Songhua jade). He further mentions that in the 39th year of Qianlong's reign (1774) official records list a total of 120 Songhua stone pieces, whether worked or as raw material, in the imperial palace collection. On three occasions that year, raw material amounting to 38 pieces from Jilin province was sent to the palace. Out of five stone pieces, eight inkstones and their boxes were made.

Another study by Chi Jo-hsin in 'A Study of the Sunghua Inkstone Tradition', Special Exhibition of Sunghua Inkstone, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1993, p. 38, mentions that "during the Qianlong period, an inventory of inkstones in the Imperial Household was compiled. Of the more than two hundred entries in the Hs'i-ch'ing- yen-pu which is part of the Ssu-k'u-ch'uan-shu, six Sunghua inkstones with imperial reign marks of the K'ang-hsi, Yung-cheng and Ch'ien-lung periods are recorded, five of which are in the collection of the National Palace Museum."

Currently there are eighty Songhua inkstones in the Palace Museum, Beijing, of which ten are attributed to Kangxi, sixteen to Yongzheng, thirteen to Qianlong, nine to Jiaqing, one to Daoguang and five to Guangxu's reigns.

Sotheby's. The Baoyizhai Collection of Chinese Lacquer, Part 1, Hong Kong, 08 avr. 2014