Lot 3108. A pair of rare doucai and famille rose ‘Nine peaches’ dishes, Yongzheng six-character marks in underglaze blue within double circles and of the period (1723-1735); 7 3/8 in. (18.7 cm.) diam. Estimate HKD 4,000,000 - HKD 6,000,000. Price realised HKD 4,685,000. © Christie's Image Ltd 2019.

Each dish is finely painted to the interior with a central medallion enclosing a peach tree bearing nine ripe fruits highlighted in delicate shades of pink and green, beside rocks and lingzhi. The reverse is decorated with eight cranes in flight, each in a different position, their crests picked out in iron red, Japanese wood box.

Note: Peaches have traditionally been associated with Daoism and longevity. In mythology, the goddess Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the Western Paradise, owned a vast peach orchard, and it was said that anyone who ate the fruit would become immortal. As such, peaches are considered sacred and auspicious, and when used as a decorative motif, convey wishes for longevity and good fortune. Vessels decorated with luxuriant peach branches were very popular in the Qing dynasty, and might have been commissioned as birthday gifts or as a form of commemoration for an imperial birthday.

Compare to three other dishes of this pattern and palette. One was included in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., exhibition, Joined Colors, Ceramics from Collectors in the Min Chiu Society, Hong Kong, 1993, no. 61, and subsequently sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 27 April 1997, lot 58; another was in the Goldschmidt Collection, and later sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 13 November 1990, lot 36; one was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 27 October 2003, lot 657, and later again on 3 June 2015, lot 3145. 

Compare also a Yongzheng-marked blue and white dish of this pattern in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, collection number guci-008899