Lot 3106. A fine and rare lavender-glazed bowl, Mark and period of Yongzheng (1723-1735); 12 cm, 4 3/4  in. Estimate 800,000 — 1,000,000 HKD. Lot sold 2,000,000 HKD. Courtesy Sotheby's

with gently flaring sides supported on a slightly tapered foot, the exterior applied with a lustrous glaze of bright even clair-de-lune tone, the interior left plain, the white base inscribed in underglaze blue with a six-character reign mark within a double circle.

Provenance: Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 27th November 1941, lot 561.
Collection of Stephen Junkunc III (1905-1978). 
Christie's New York, 21st September 1995, lot 248.
A European private collection.

Exhibited: Imperial Porcelain of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, S. Marchant & Son, London, 1996, cat. no. 12.
Chinese Ceramics Tang to Qing, Marchant, London, 2014, cat. no. 37.

Note: A pair of Yongzheng mark and period bowls covered overall in a clair-de-lune glaze was included in the exhibition Chinese Porcelain in the S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1987, cat. no. 148; and another pair, from the Sir Joseph E. Hotung Family trust, was exhibited in Recent Acquisitions, S. Marchant & Son, London, 2002, cat. no. 17. See also a pair included in the exhibition Qing Porcelain and Works of Art, Osaka City Museum, Osaka, 1994, cat. no. 111; and a further bowl, formerly in the collection of H.R.N. Norton, included in the exhibition Imperial Chinese Porcelain, Ceramics & Works of Art, Marchant, London, 2013, cat. no. 26. See also a similar pair of bowls from the Zhuyuetang collection, included in the exhibition A Millennium of Monochromes, from the Great Tang to the High Qing, Fondation Baur, Geneva, 2018, cat. nos 87a-b.

For an example sold at auction, see the bowl from the collection of Kate Sturgess Buckingham, accessioned to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1926, sold at Christie's New York, 12th September 2019, lot 745.

Sotheby's. Marchant – Fifty Qing Imperial Porcelains, Hong Kong, 11 July 2020