Lot 105.  Property from the Barbara and Lester Levy Collection. A blue and white 'lotus' candlestick, Seal mark and period of Qianlong (1736-1795). Height 16.5 cm, Lot sold 27,940 USD (Estimate 30,000 - 50,000 USD). © Sotheby's 2024

the base with a four-character seal script mark in underglaze blue within a double circle.

Provenance: Collection of Geo E. McCague (1858-1926), acquired in 1903.

Cincinnati Private Collection.

Note: According to a court record, in the second month of the ninth year of the Qianlong period (1744), the Emperor instructed two eunuchs to send to Tang Ying, the superintendent of the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen, a blue and white inscribed ‘reading lamp’ as a model, together with a poem written by the Emperor, in order to fire a few reading lamps in underglaze blue or 'foreign colors' (famille-rose), both in varying sizes. The calligraphy of the sample lamp was to be replaced by his own poem, or, for candlesticks intended as altar pieces, such as the present lot, the poem was to be omitted, see Tang Ying du tao wendang [Archive on Tang Ying’s Supervision of the Imperial Kilns], Beijing, 2012, p. 162. Interestingly, this group of candlesticks specially ordered by the Emperor himself, including the present, all have an unusual Qianlong mark that is rarely seen on other pieces.
A closely related candlestick, also similarly decorated with a band of lappets to the middle pan instead of Qianlong's poem, formerly in the collection of Dr. Ip Lee, was included in the exhibition Chinese Blue and White Porcelain and Related Underglaze Red, Oriental Ceramic Society, Hong Kong, 1975, cat. no. 110; another in the Coles Collection, was included in Blue and White Porcelain, Oriental Ceramic Society, London, 1954, cat. no. 310; a third, was sold in our Paris rooms, 10th December 2019, lot 12. For other candlesticks, with similar marks, but inscribed with the Emperor's imperial poem, intended to be used as reading lamps, see two in the National Palace Museum, Taipei (accession nos 故瓷008897N000000000 and 故瓷008896N000000000); and two others in the Palace Museum, Beijing (accession nos 故00152885 and 故00160317-1/51).

Sotheby's. Chinese Art, New York, 19 March 2024