Lot 523. A finely painted blue and white 'dragon' garlic-mouth bottle vase, Wanli mark and period (1573-1620). Height 17 3/8  in., 44.2 cm. Estimate 60,000 — 80,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

sturdily potted, the pear-shaped body supported on a short foot, tapering to a tall neck with a garlic-head mouth and upright mouth rim, the body painted with two pairs of confronted phoenix and sinuous five-clawed dragons in pursuit of 'flaming pearls' amidst a composite floral scroll, all above a band of upright lappets and ruyi at the foot and below a border of keyfret at the shoulder, the slightly waisted neck painted with a meandering floral scroll and auspicious emblems, with bands of stylized pendent ruyi and cloud scroll encircling the mouth, the six-character reign mark inscribed in a horizontal line within a rectangular cartouche at the rim, Japanese wood box (3).

Note: Garlic-mouth vases of this distinctive form are outstanding among the larger Wanli wares and are known decorated with several variations in the horizontal bands. The dynamism of the leaping dragons and swooping phoenix, emblems of the emperor and empress, confronting a 'flaming pearl' is accentuated by the tight lotus and baijixiang scrolls adorning the neck, all surmounted by a bulbous mouth. Related dragon and phoenix vases include a slightly larger example, but with a border of prunus flowers on a wave ground on the shoulder and stylised lappet bands around the mouth, published in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. I, Tokyo, 1976, pl. 298, and sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 1st June 2011, lot 3591, from the collection of the B.S.N. Niigata Hoso Museum, Niigata; and a smaller example, but with interlocking pomegranates on the mouth, sold in these rooms, 7th December 1983, lot 301, again in our London rooms, 13th December 1988, lot 169, and a third time in our Hong Kong rooms, 2nd May 2000, lot 659. See also a vase of this type decorated with a pair of five-clawed dragons below a lotus scroll on the neck and pearl strings on its mouth, from the Meiyintang Collection, illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. IV, pl. 343; and another painted with two pairs of sinuous dragons in pursuit of 'flaming pearls' amidst floral scrolls, sold in these rooms, 15th March 2017, lot 11. 

Vases of this form and design are also found decorated in polychrome enamels; for example see one with varying bands of decoration, from the collection of A.A. Ballard, sold at Christie’s London, 9th June 1975, lot 79; and another in the Matsuoka Museum of Art, Tokyo, published in Toyo Toji Meihin Zuroku [Illustrated Catalogue of Famous Pieces of Oriental Pottery and Porcelain], Tokyo, 1991, pl. 94.

Pear-shape vases with a bulbous mouth resembling a garlic head were produced in bronze from as early as the Western Han period (206 BC – AD 9); see a pair of vases sold in these rooms, 12th-13th March 1975, lot 157, and again, from the collection of J.T. Tai & Co., 22nd March 2011, lot 191.   

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, New York, 21 march 2018, 10:00 AM