Note: This large and impressive yen yen vase exemplifies the practice of firing on biscuit ground, which reached it zenith during the Kangxi period.  Since the famille-verte colors were being applied directly to the body, as opposed to wucaienamelling, which were painted over a high fired white glaze ground, the enamelling had to be applied over the entire background of the piece.  As a result, three ground tones emerged - black (famille-noire), yellow (famille-jaune) and pale green.  R.L. Hobson in The Later Ceramic Wares of China, New York, 1925, p. 31, catagorized the "transparent green" as the rarest of these three sub-groups.  He quantifies the remark by stating that "large vases with green enamel grounds are excessively rare, and it would not take long to compile a complete list of those which are known." 

The Frick Collection has a vase similar to the present lot and lists the six published examples to date, (Frick Collection, New York, 1974, p. 102).  Five are in museum collections: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, illustrated in Lion-Goldschmidt / Moreau-Gobard, 1980, no., 154, p. 197; Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated in Valenstein 1975, no. 128, p. 191; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, illustrated in Ward / Fidler, 1993, no. 47-21, p. 300; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, illustrated in Honey, 1927, pl. 29.  The sixth one is presumably the present lot, described as in the hands of a New York dealer.   All measure between twenty-seven and thirty inches and are similarly decorated with lush prunus branches and rockwork.  The present lot differs from all five others with the addition of a yellow band encircling the neck, which is sometimes found on famille-noire yen yen vases, but quite uncommon on green-ground vases.