Lot 3690. A carved pear-shaped celadon 'Flower' vase, yuhuchunping, 14th century; 33.2 cm., 13 in. Estimate 600,000 — 800,000 HKD. Lot sold 2,200,000 HKD (224,366 EUR). Photo Sotheby’s

exquisitely potted with a pear-shaped body tapering to a tall waisted neck and flared mouthrim, the exterior carved with blooming florets wreathed in intertwining sprigs, all above a band of petal lappets, the neck similarly decorated with stylistic floral scrolls, covered overall with an unctuous even sea-green glaze save for the unglazed footring burnt to an orange-russet during the firing.

Provenance: An old Japanese collection.

Note: Celadon vases of this form decorated in this style were made after contemporaneous wares manufactured in the official kilns of Jingdezhen. Similar to their underglaze-blue and underglaze-red counterparts, Longquan celadon vases were decorated with a great variety of designs, such as lotus scrolls, gardenia and fruiting grape-vines. Julian Thompson in ‘Chinese Celadons’, Arts of Asia, November/December 1993, p. 64, notes that by the 15th century ‘it appears that the Jingdezhen wares had become so popular that the Longquan potters had to adapt the complicated painted designs to their own technique of carving’.

A closely related vase in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Celadons from Longquan Kilns, Taipei, 1998, pl. 161; another was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 1st October 1991, lot 732; and a third, but decorated around the shoulder with an asymmetrical ruyi-head border, sold in these rooms, 29th November 1976, lot 452, and again, 5th November 1996, lot 635. It is published in Thompson, op. cit., fig. 14, where the author notes that it closely follows a Hongwu prototype, p. 64. Compare also a pear-shaped vase incised with a lotus scroll, illustrated in Michael Sullivan, Chinese Ceramics, Bronzes and Jades in the Collection of Sir Alan and Lady Barlow, London, 1963, pl. 95b; and another carved with fruiting grapes framed by a similar keyfret border and petal panels with foliate motifs, illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. 3, pt. II, London, 2006, pl. 1582.

For examples of related Jingdezhen counterparts, see a vase painted in copper-red with a peony scroll, illustrated in Sekai toji zenshu, vol. 13, Tokyo, 1981, col. Pl. 214; and another, decorated in underglaze blue with a lotus scroll, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, published in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (I), Hong Kong, 2008, pl. 14.

Sotheby’s. Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, Hong Kong, 08 oct. 2014