Note: These delicate bowls are notable for their exquisite lace-like decoration, which was made by piercing the body with a delicate openwork design of small perforations that were subsequently filled with a clear glaze. An innovation of the Qianlong period, this decoration is known in the West as ‘grains-de-riz’ [rice grain], because the tiny perforations resembled small grains of rice.

Compare a closely related example in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Kangxi. Yongzheng. Qianlong. Qing Porcelain from the Palace Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1989, pl. 147; another in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, published in John Ayers and Satō Masahiko, eds, Sekai tōji zenshū/Ceramic Art of the World, vol. 15, Tokyo, 1983, pl. 280; one with a more elaborate motif, from the Meiyintang collection, illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. 2, London, 1994, pl. 793, and sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 8th October 2012, lot 3; and a pair from the Alfred F. Pillsbury collection in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, included in the exhibition Chinese Ceramics from the Prehistoric Period through Ch’ien-Lung, Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, 1952, cat. no. 320

Sotheby's. Imperial Porcelain - A Private Collection, London, 6 November 2019