Lot 2180. A very rare large copper-red-glazed bowl, Yongzheng incised four-character seal mark and of the period (1723-1735); 12½ in. (31.8 cm.) diam. Estimate USD 60,000 - USD 80,000. Price Realized USD 209,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2014. 

The bowl is finely potted with deep rounded sides rising to a flared rim, and is covered inside and out with a finely mottled glaze of crushed-strawberry-red color that thins on the rim.

Provenance: Nesbitt Collection, Oklahoma City, acquired before 1970.

Note: The beautiful, unctuous, opaque mottled glaze on the present bowl is clearly inspired and adapted from the Langyao glaze developed during the preceding Kangxi reign. The ceramicists appear to have combined the Langyao glaze with features of another newly developed glaze, the flambé glaze. The combination appears to have produced a very unusual color which does not seem to have been achieved on other pieces of this or subsequent periods.

The shape and thinning of the glaze to a paler color at the rim, relate closely to a Kangxi period Langyao bowl in the Shanghai Museum, illustrated in Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1998, p. 327, no. 213.
Compare, also, a Kangxi Langyao vase with a Qianlong imperial inscription, decorated with a streaked glaze approaching that found on the current bowl in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - 37 - Monochrome Porcelain, Hong Kong, 1999, pp. 16-17, no. 14.

A blue-glazed bottle vase with a very similar four-character Yongzheng seal mark incised on the clear-glazed white porcelain base is illustrated op. cit., Hong Kong, 1999, fig. 165.

Christie's. Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, New York, 20 - 21 March 2014