Lot 804. A fine and exceedingly rare copper-red and underglaze-blue 'fish' stem bowl, Ming dynasty, Chenghua period (1465-1487): 22.8 cm. Lot Sold 19,895,000 HKD (Estimate 8,000,000 - 16,000,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2025
 

finely potted with a deep rounded bowl raised on a spreading stem, the exterior exquisitely decorated with four evenly spaced fish swimming amongst gently undulating fronds of lotus, with dotted stems and flowers in various stages of bloom, interspersed with sprays of arrow grass and waterweeds emerging from a band of crested waves, all rendered in soft tones of underglaze cobalt-blue, the fish comprising a mandarin fish with a rounded tail fin and three carp-like fish with split tail fins and one with prominent barbels, applied in the form of a rich glossy copper-red glaze, their scales and details finely incised into the porcelain body beneath the glaze, the tall splayed stem similarly decorated with matching lotus sprays above waves
 

Provenance: Christie’s New York, 28th October 1977, lot 109.
Collection of Agnes Hellner (1888-1984), Stockholm.
Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 14th November 1983, lot 125.
Collection of the Chang Foundation, Taipei.
 

Exhibited: Treasures from the Chang Foundation, National Museum of Chinese History, Beijing, 1996, cat. no. 19.
 

Literature: Anthony du Boulay, Christie's Pictorial History of Chinese Ceramics, London, 1984, p. 147, fig. 3 (erroneously captioned).
Sotheby’s Hong Kong – Twenty Years, 1973-1993, Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 104 (with misattributed auction record in the caption).
Chang Foundation Inaugural Catalogue, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1990, p. 45.
Selected Chinese Ceramics from Han to Qing Dynasties, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1990, no. 92.

Beloved Motif in Stunning Colour
Regina Krahl
 

This rare stem bowl is a triumph of Jingdezhen’s artisans both aesthetically and technically. The noble silhouettes of four glowing, deep red fish graciously moving through a calm, clear blue lotus pond superbly evoke the Daoist message of carefree ease and freedom from restraints that this motif carried for centuries. The supposed debate about the pleasures of fish between the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi and the Confucian thinker Huizi in the fourth century BC, that is recorded in the book Zhuangzi, has inspired ink painters ever since the Song dynasty (960–1279) and porcelain painters since the Yuan (1271–1368). Until the Jingdezhen workshops developed polychrome colour schemes, however, the fish were rendered in the same underglaze blue as the water plants. In its simple but striking colour effect, this copper-red and cobalt-blue version of the beloved motif is unsurpassed.
 

That it was so rarely executed in red and blue is easy to understand when looking at its complex and challenging production method. What makes this stem bowl so special and the red motifs so impressive, is that they were not painted on under the glaze in copper-red pigment, like the cobalt blue, but applied in form of a copper-red glaze. The fact that the outcome of this onerous process could not easily be predicted and a production line of reliable quality could therefore not be guaranteed may also explain the fact that this vessel does not bear a reign mark, when it so obviously is of imperial quality.

"This rare stem bowl is a triumph of Jingdezhen’s artisans both aesthetically and technically. The noble silhouettes of four glowing, deep red fish graciously moving through a calm, clear blue lotus pond superbly evoke the Daoist message of carefree ease and freedom from restraints that this motif carried for centuries.”

Copper-red, the most stunning colour on a white porcelain surface, has always been the most difficult to achieve and always remained extremely rare. It began to be used in the Yuan dynasty, perhaps even before the potters discovered how much easier cobalt-blue was to handle. Splashes of red glaze without clearly defined outline were already used decoratively at that period; see James C.Y. Watt, ed., The World of Khubilai Khan. Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, fig. 319 and p. 268, for a bottle excavated at Jininglu, Chaoyouqian Banner, Inner Mongolia. In the Hongwu reign (1368–98), underglaze red even partly displaced underglaze blue because of difficulties to procure cobalt from abroad, but it rarely yielded satisfactory results. It is in the Yongle (1403–24) and Xuande (1426–35) periods, that copper red had its heyday, but mainly in form of a monochrome red glaze. Thereafter, it virtually disappeared until it was revived and mastered again in the early Qing dynasty (1644–1911), with only the rarest successful examples being recorded from this interim period. The present stem bowl is one of them.
 

Active exploration of copper red in various techniques began in the Yongle period, when the kilns realised many innovative ideas. Most of the attempts, however, do not seem to have convinced the potters, since they were discarded; for porcelains with underglaze-red painted and red-glaze designs recovered in form of rejects from the waste heaps of the Ming imperial kilns, see Jingdezhen Zhushan chutu Yongle guanyao ciqi [Yongle Imperial porcelain excavated at Zhushan, Jingdezhen], Capital Museum, Beijing, 2007, nos 107–117. These already included trials in combining designs in red glaze with underglaze-blue painting. A stem bowl with sea creatures in red glaze among blue waves and a stem cup with red fish among blue waves (fig. 1) have come to light, which are direct predecessors of the present piece. In both cases the red turned out rather poorly. Only very occasionally did a piece pass the strict quality controls, such as the ambitious monumental meiping with white dragons reserved on waves of red glaze, an admirable achievement even though the red is not of even tone throughout, see Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1634.
 

fig. 1 - Underglaze-blue and copper-red 'fish' stem cup, Ming dynasty, Yongle period, h. 7.2 cm, excavated in 1984 at Zhushan, Jingdezhen.
 

In the Xuande reign, the potters appear to have slightly lowered their ambition. The main copper red products produced for the imperial court are stem bowls and stem cups of imperial quality and inscribed with the imperial reign mark, decorated with only three large blobs of red glaze on the white porcelain, whose outlines, minimally manipulated, made them legible as fish or three different fruits; see examples in the Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the Museum’s exhibition Mingdai Xuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu/Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, pls 81, 86, 87.
 

At the same time, the Jingdezhen workshops continued to experiment with more complex designs and made similar trials also with other colours, most of which, however, were discarded still at the workshops; see Jingdezhen chutu Ming Xuande guanyao ciqi/Xuande Imperial Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1998, pls 46, 49 and 101-2 for red-glaze fish and fruits; pls 45, 101-1, 101- 3 and F9 for pieces with red-glaze dragons and sea creatures; and pls 47 and 74 for fish, fruits and other motifs in iron-brown glaze; even a combination of cobalt-blue, copper-red and iron-brown spots was tried out, ibid., pl. F32. While the fish and fruits do not seem to show incised underdrawings, the dragons do. Only very rarely was copper red combined with cobalt blue, most admirably on a stem bowl with red dragons among blue waves, also unmarked but attributed to the Xuande reign in the Xuande exhibition, Taipei, 1998, op.cit., pl. 100.

"What makes this stem bowl so special and the red motifs so impressive, is that they were not painted on under the glaze in copper-red pigment, like the cobalt blue, but applied in the form of a copper-red glaze."

During the subsequent Interregnum period between the Xuande and Chenghua (1465–87) reigns, porcelains of imperial quality but without reign marks continued to be produced, as archaeological excavations have now revealed, even if most of the production never left the manufactories. Blue-and-white stem bowls were produced in many different designs, but no employment of any form of copper red could be documented for this period.
The Chenghua period is also not well-known for copper-red decorated porcelains, but three bowls with red fish like those of the Xuande reign exist of Chenghua mark and period, two in the Palace Museum, included in the Museums’ exhibition Chenghua ciqi tezhan tulu/Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Ch’eng-hua Porcelain Ware, 1465-1487, Taipei, 2003, cat. nos 98 and 99 (fig. 2); and one in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, illustrated in Jan Wirgin, Ming Porcelain in the Collection of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. Hongwu to Chenghua, Stockholm, 1991, no. 37. Unlike in the Xuande reign, the fish are here combined with incised lotus-petal borders on the white ground.

fig. 2 - Large bowl with three fish in copper-red and anhua lotus petal panels, Mark and period of Chenghua, 21.5 cm, Taipei Palace Museum, accession no. guci 9801 @ www.npm.gov.tw
 

Both the Xuande and Chenghua porcelains show three red fishes, all of the same type, without any incised details, and the same simple silhouettes were still repeated on the rare examples from later Ming reigns, and even revived in the Qing dynasty; see a bowl of Wanli (1573–1620) and one of Yongzheng (1723–35) mark and period, both with three such fish, in the Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in the exhibition Ming Chenghua ciqi tezhan [Special exhibition of Ming Chenghua porcelain], Taipei, 1977, pls 99 and 100.

The red fish on our stem bowl are far more complex. Here we see four different creatures, one identifiable as a mandarin fish with round tail fin, the others carp-like, with split tail fins and one with prominent barbels, all with scales and other details incised into the porcelain body under the red glaze. Such well-defined copper-red fish are otherwise only known from the two recorded companion pieces, one in the Palace Museum, Taipei, published in Minji meihin zuroku/Illustrated Catalogue of Ming Dynasty Porcelain in the Palace Museum, vol. II, Tokyo, 1977, pl. 32; the other illustrated in S.T. Yeo and Jean Martin, Chinese Blue and White Ceramics, Singapore, 1978, fig. 16, and now in the collection of Au Bak Ling.

Although experiments with copper-red glaze continued also throughout the Chenghua reign, no other examples of combined red and blue designs appear to have come to light from this period. The Taipei fish bowls are considered by Cai Hebi to represent products of the early Chenghua period, when many Xuande designs re-appeared (Chuanshi pin Chenghua ci/Everlasting Chenghua Porcelain, Taipei, 2003, p. 10), the discarded red-glaze porcelains excavated at Jingdezhen are attributed by the archaeologists to the mid-Chenghua stratum of the site (A Legacy of Chenghua: Imperial Porcelain of the Chenghua Reign Excavated from Zhushan, Jingdezhen, The Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1993, nos B18, B22 and B23).

"Copper-red, the most stunning colour on a white porcelain surface, has always been the most difficult to achieve and always remained extremely rare [..] It is in the Yongle and Xuande periods, that copper red had its heyday [...] thereafter, it virtually disappeared until it was revived and mastered again in the early Qing dynasty, with only the rarest successful examples being recorded from this interim period. The present stem bowl is one of them."
 

These ‘silhouette reds’ are discussed in Nigel Wood, Chinese Glazes. Their Origins, Chemistry and Recreation, London, 1999, p. 179, where he states “… the Xuande silhouette wares seem to have used copper-red glazes rather than copper-red pigments, which gave more reliable results… How these two-colour wares were made in practice is not fully understood. A combination of paper-resist, followed by painting the copper-red glaze into the resisted area, once the plain glaze had been applied and the paper removed, seems logical, although super-imposition of the red glaze on the ‘white’ glaze might also have worked, perhaps using paper stencils to apply the copper-red shapes. There is also the possibility that the red glaze was ‘sandwiched’ between clear glazes. The greater thickness of the red glaze, noticeable on a number of these silhouette wares, suggests its use under, over, or between the porcelain glazes, but this extra thickness may simply be due to the fact that copper-red glazes need to be applied thicker than porcelain glazes in order to maximise their colours. When successful these silhouette wares can be of superb quality … However, the small numbers that have survived, often with their copper-red areas misfired, suggest that the technique may not have been an easy one.” The Chinese language unfortunately does not distinguish between decoration with underglaze-red pigment and with red glaze and thus does not allow for any qualification of the technique involved, since both are known as youlihong, literally ‘in-glaze red’.

If the procedure of creating decoration in red glaze was not an easy one, its combination with underglaze cobalt blue, as on our stem bowl, must have made it even more complicated. On our stem bowl, where the scales and other features of the fish were incised before firing, the working procedure, following Wood’s ‘logical’ sequence, would have required: incising the fish – painting the cobalt-blue water plants around it – covering the fish with paper – applying the clear glaze overall – removing the resist paper – filling red glaze into the resisted areas. That the red glaze sits directly on the porcelain body is suggested by the fact that some of the incised lines have taken on a darker tone, and since in some areas the red glaze covers the cobalt blue it must have been applied after the blue pigment was painted on.

Since copper red proved forever challenging, it was often replaced by overglaze iron red, an incomparably easier colour to handle, occasionally already in the Xuande period, but particularly in later blue-and-red designs. While copper red requires the same high firing temperatures as the porcelain itself to mature, iron red is applied onto the fully glazed and fired porcelain surface and is fixed on in a second firing at lower temperatures. This minimises the risk of failure, but the thin, mat tomato-red pigment supplied by iron cannot compare with the rich, glossy ruby red glaze provided by copper; compare a Xuande stem cup with iron-red fish in the Xuande exhibition, Taipei, 1998, op.cit., pl. 82; and a bowl with iron-red fish among blue lotus plants, attributed to the Hongzhi period (1488–1505), and a jar and cover with a fish pond design in iron-red and blue, of Jiajing mark and period (1522–66), both in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang wenwu zhenpin quanji. Qinghua youlihong/The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red, Shanghai, 2000, vol. 2, pls 226 and 227.

"The red fish on our stem bowl are far more complex […] all with scales and other details incised into the porcelain body under the red glaze. Such well-defined copper-red fish are otherwise only known from the two recorded companion pieces."

Lotus ponds are a rare motif on Chenghua blue-and-white porcelain, but the delicate painting of the lotus and other water plants on our piece, in a clear but soft blue, is characteristic of the Chenghua reign. The graceful movement of the long slender water weeds beautifully evokes the slight ripples in the pond, created by the movement of the fish. A lotus pond without fishes but with insects hovering above the plants, rendered in a similar style, can be seen on small jars of Chenghua mark and period, for example a piece from the Endo collection sold in these rooms, 29th April 1997, lot 407 and illustrated in Sotheby’s: Thirty Years in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2003, pl. 243 (fig. 3). A similar lotus pond without fish appears also on an unmarked blue and white stem bowl, with lingzhi motifs at the stem, sold in our London rooms, 23rd May 1972, lot 129, illustrated in Adrian M. Joseph, Ming Porcelains. Their Origins and Development, London, 1971, pl. 44, and included in the exhibition Asian Art, Knapton Rasti, London, November 2005, no. 11; and on a second one, sold at Christie’s London, 5th/6th July 1983, lot 271.
 

fig. 3 - Blue and white 'lotus pond' jar, Mark and period of Chenghua, h. 10.3 cm, from the collection of T. Endo and at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 29th April 1997, lot 407.
 

Agnes Hellner (1888–1984), who once owned the present piece, was an heir to the Swedish glass making company Orrefors, and wife of Dr Johannes Hellner (1866–1947), founding member of Sweden’s China Club (Kinaklubben) and important collector of Chinese ceramics.

Sotheby's. Imperial Connoisseurship Treasures of Chinese Art from A Prestigious Collection, Hong Kong, 21 November 2025