Lot 146. A fine and rare doucai 'immortals' dish, Qing dynasty, Kangxi-Yongzheng period (1662-1735). Diameter 6 in., 15.3 cm. Estimate: 60,000 - 80,000 USD. Lot sold: 94,500 USD. Courtesy Sotheby's.

delicately painted with a central medallion depicting Shoulao seated atop a rock reading a scroll, a pine tree stretching overhead and an attendant preparing incense in the foreground, the cavetto encircled by the 'Eight Buddhist Emblems' entwined in a foliate scroll, the exterior with a continuous frieze depicting the 'Eight Daoist Immortals' in a riverscape, the base centered with an iron-red roundel of a crane bearing a peach bough in its beak.

Property from the Studio of Serendipitous Encounters.

Provenance: Collection of Commander F. Warrington-Strong.

Sotheby's London, 23rd May 1972, lot 173. 

Sotheby's London, 8th-9th July 1974, lot 434.

Bluett & Sons Ltd., London, 11th August 1975.

Collection of Frederick Knight. 

Bluett & Sons Ltd., London, 13th October 1982.

Collection of Chia-Shi Lin (1930-2020), and thence by descent.

Note: Only a small number of doucai dishes of this rare design are known, including one in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours. The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 1999, pl. 219; and a pair included in the exhibition Ch'ing Polychrome Porcelain, Hong Kong Oriental Ceramics Society, Hong Kong, 1977, cat. no. 63. Two further pairs are known, the first from the collection of Alfred E. Hippisley (1848-1939), sold at Anderson Galleries, New York, 30th-31st January 1925, lot 190 and today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (accession no. 25.35.4), illustrated in Oriental Ceramics. The World's Great Collections, vol. 11, Tokyo, 1982, pl. 143; the second was formerly in the Paul and Helen Bernat Collection, sold twice in our Hong Kong rooms, first on 15th November 1988, lot 12 and again on 13th November 1990, lot 330. A single dish, formerly in the collection of Dr. Nat Yuen, is now in the collection of the University of Queensland (accession no. 2005.20); another from the collection of Sir Harry Garner was included in the exhibition Arts of the Ch'ing Dynasty, The Oriental Ceramics Society, London, 1964, cat. no 197, and subsequently sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 28th November 2005, lot 1335.

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, New York, 17 march 2021