Lot 9815. Property from The Leshantang Collection. A very rare blue and white 'lianzi' bowl, Ming dynasty, Yongle period; 16.2 cm. Lot Sold 1,792,000 HKD (Estimate 1,000,000 - 2,500,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2026

Provenance: Christie's Hong Kong, 29th May 2007, lot 1452.
 

Note: Porcelain from the Yongle reign (1403–24) marks a pinnacle of Ming dynasty artistry, marked by its elegant forms, luminous glaze, and motifs touched by foreign influence. This bowl, made for the imperial court, exemplifies that rarefied world: such fine porcelains were reserved for palace use, and examples today remain chiefly in the collections of the Palace Museums. They rarely appear abroad, for they were created to delight the emperor’s eye rather than impress foreign courts.

Known as a lianzi wan or “lotus bowl,” its lotus-bud form evokes the curve of a lotus bud, an image deeply rooted in Chinese visual culture and symbolism of renewal and purity. Yet the decoration that unfurls across the surface tells of broader horizons. Along the borders and lotus-petal tips dance trefoil (fleur-de-lys) motifs, complemented by lambrequin borders and lotus loops with under-and-over interlacing. These echo the ornament on earlier Khorasan metalwork, bronze and brass vessels from Central Asia and western Iran, now translated into painted cobalt blue.

During the Yongle reign, imperial records document multiple exchanges with the Khorasan region, including the overland journeys of diplomatic envoy Chen Cheng (1365–1457). In 1414, 1417, and 1420, he travelled to Central Asia and western Iran, including key centres like Herat, then a flourishing centre of metalwork production, bringing news, tribute, and gifts between two great artistic worlds.

Jingdezhen’s painters, tasked with devising endless patterns for porcelain destined for the court, drew inspiration from arriving tribute gifts, wherever elegance and novelty appeared. Absorbing foreign motifs, they adapted them through the lens of Chinese aesthetics, sparking a visual conversation.

What emerged was a style neither wholly Chinese nor wholly foreign, a synthesis the bowl’s floral decoration reflects clearly. This cosmopolitan spirit extends from its borders to its blooms. Inside, a composite scroll of eight-petalled blooms appears fully opened and frontal, without buds or fruit. Exterior sprays of four seasonal flowers, abstracted yet lively, are painted in frilly brushwork. These idealised renderings, atypical of Chinese conventions, recall the stylised floral medallions of Middle Eastern art. The painter’s delicate handling of cobalt blue, prone to "heaping and piling" under the kiln’s heat, creates a velvety rhythm across the porcelain’s surface, a technical mastery that the Yongle kilns made their hallmark.

In its poised form and layered motifs, the bowl captures the Ming court’s blend of intimacy and outreach. Its restrained elegance embodies the court's vision of refinement; its motifs echo the far-reaching curiosity of an emperor who dispatched fleets and envoys in every direction. It stands as an eloquent testament to an age when beauty served as both a language of power and a mirror to the world’s expanding connections.

This bowl belongs to a rare group made exclusively for the imperial court, with most examples preserved in the collections of the Palace Museums. Compare a small group of similar bowls in the Taipei Palace Museum, attributed to the Ming dynasty, 15th century, and illustrated on the museum's website. One from the Ardabil Shrine, now in the National Museum of Iran, illustrated in Takatoshi Misugi, Chinese Porcelain Collections in the Near East: Topkapi and Ardebil, Hong Kong, vol. 3, 1981, no. A.53. One from the collections of George Eumorfopoulos and Mrs Walter Sedgwick, sold in our London rooms, 29th May 1940, lot 220, and now in the British Museum, accession no. 1968,0422.28. One from the collection of A. D. Brankston and Mrs W. Roberts, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, accession no. C.15–1952. A further example sold in our New York rooms, 18th March 2021, lot 130.

Lot 9816. Property from The Leshantang Collection. A very rare blue and white stem bowl, Mark and period of Wanli; 15.3 cm. Lot Sold 704,000 HKD (Estimate 500,000 - 1,000,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2026
 

Provenance: A Parisian private collection.
A European collection.
Christie's Hong Kong, 30th November 2011, lot 2923.

Lot 9817. Property from The Leshantang Collection. A very rare blue and white 'dragon' rectangular box and cover, Mark and period of Wanli; 19.7 cm. Lot Sold 217,600 HKD (Estimate 180,000 - 300,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2026
 

Provenance: Sotheby's Hong Kong, 28th November 1979, lot 115 (buyer Robert Chang).
Christie's London, 15th December 1980, lot 118.
 

Exhibited; Exhibition of Chinese Blue and White Porcelain and Related Underglaze Red, Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong in association with the Urban Council, City Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong, 1975, cat. no. 45.
 

Note: Covered boxes were a notably popular and versatile form during the Wanli reign, appearing in imperial kiln records in a range of shapes, sizes and motifs, and finished in either vibrant wucai enamels or underglaze blue. The present example, with indented corners and recessed panels, consciously echoes contemporary gold and silver caskets.

Similar boxes are preserved in the Taipei Palace Museum (acc. nos guci‑12638 and 12639). See also a rare diminutive Wanli box decorated with boys at play in a garden, offered as lot 801 in “Treasures of a Flourishing Age: The Songde Tang Collection of Ming Porcelain”.

Lot 9818. Property from The Leshantang Collection. A fine and very rare miniature blue and white 'Eight Treasures' stem cup, Mark and period of Yongzheng; h. 4.7 cm. Lot Sold 1,792,000 HKD (Estimate 250,000 - 400,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2026
 

Provenance: Christie's Hong Kong, 28th April 1997, lot 669.
 

Note: The present vessel belongs to a small group of Yongzheng blue and white stem cups inspired by Chenghua period creations of the Ming dynasty. Most examples from this group closely reproduce the earlier models in design, form, and scale, typically standing around 8 cm high. The current cup, however, represents a rarer reinterpretation within this tradition, remarkable for its diminutive size, measuring roughly half the height of both its Chenghua originals and standard Yongzheng counterparts (for comparison, see a Chenghua example in the Taipei Palace Museum, acc. no. guci‑3543, and a Yongzheng version of standard size, acc. no. guci‑1625).

A notable Yongzheng example, closely comparable to the present lot, is in the collection of the Taipei Palace Museum (acc. no. guci-18002); it was later fitted into an inlaid zitan curio box of the Qianlong period (acc. no. guza-538), highlighting the emperor’s discernment and personal interest in such finely crafted miniature vessels.

See a related example, also from the Leshantang Collection, belonging to the same group but characterised by a ruyi strapwork above the stem and a slightly more rounded bowl, sold in these rooms, 9th April 2024, lot 117. Both variants trace their origins to celebrated fifteenth-century imperial designs, echoing the elegant forms and motifs of Ming court porcelains while demonstrating both the standard and the rare miniature Yongzheng interpretations of this classic type.

Lot 9818. Property from The Leshantang Collection. A very rare blue and white 'floral' moon flask, Seal mark and period of Yongzheng; 26 cm. Lot Sold 2,560,000 HKD (Estimate 1,200,000 - 3,000,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2026
 

Provenance: Sotheby's London, 6th July 1976, lot 204 (buyer Robert Chang).
Offered at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 21st May 1980, lot 191.
 

Exhibited: Chūgoku meitō ten: Chūgoku tōji 2000-nen no seika [Exhibition of important Chinese ceramics: Essence of two thousand years of Chinese ceramics], Nihonbashi Takashimaya, Tokyo, and six other locations in Japan, 1992, cat. no. 136.
 

Literature: The Leshantang Collection of Chinese Porcelain, Taipei, 2005, pl. 28.
 

Note: Moon flasks take their poetic name from their perfectly round bodies, which recall the glowing full moon seen in profile, but the present piece pushes the type in a more ambitious direction, one that is notoriously difficult to fire, with a very full bulging body rising from a narrow foot. That volume of clay sitting so top‑heavy makes such pieces prone to slump, lean or crack in the kiln, so perfectly balanced flasks of this pronounced, sculptural fullness are costly to produce, and while this demanding form was highly esteemed by emperors in its own time, the few examples that survive today are exceptionally rare and especially prized by connoisseurs.
In both shape and decoration, this moon flask deliberately looks back to celebrated early 15th‑century Ming masterpieces, particularly Yongle blue‑and‑white wares (for example, the Yongle flask in the Taipei Palace Museum, acc. no. guci-8844), but does so through an 18th‑century lens. The Yongzheng emperor, arguably the first true art‑lover among the Manchu rulers, actively brought Ming imperial wares out of the storerooms to be closely studied, prominently displayed, and sensitively reinterpreted by his craftsmen. Under his patronage, potters reimagined early Ming prototypes, refining the silhouette and even reviving much‑admired “imperfections” such as the mottled heaping‑and‑piling of early 15th‑century cobalt, creating works that honour the Ming past while speaking directly to Yongzheng’s own refined taste and elegance.
Only five other flasks of this rare type appear to have been published, all displaying very minor variations in proportion, or in the secondary motif on the neck, while sharing the same principal design on the body. The closest comparable, though considerably taller at 37.5 cm, is the example from the collections of R.F.A. Riesco and Ira and Nancy Koger, which has appeared several times at auction and most recently as the cover lot (and as lot 1019) of Christie’s New York, 19th September 2025. Most recorded examples are of similarly tall proportions, including a flask of 37 cm, decorated instead with a narrow floral band below the rim, from the collection of Gerald Reitlinger, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (acc. no. EA1978.1988). Two further examples, both with a register of scrolling lotus on the neck, have appeared at auction: one sold three times, most recently in these rooms on 8th October 2013, lot 3022, and illustrated in Sotheby’s Hong Kong. Twenty Years, 1973–1993, Hong Kong, 1993, no. 175; the other in our London rooms, 16th June 1998, lot 251 (possibly the same one sold in our London rooms, 17th December 1980, lot 645). The only published example of closely comparable size (28.4 cm) is preserved in the Beijing Palace Museum (acc. no. gu-149427), although its neck is more slender and encircled by a floral scroll.
Compare also two further related flasks of towering presence, but with a neck closer to the Yongle silhouette and fitted with dragon handles: the first from the collections of Dr Chang His-hai and Tianminlou, sold several times at auction and most recently at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30th November 2023, lot 2711; and the second preserved in the Beijing Palace Museum, illustrated in The Palace Museum’s Collection of Blue and White Porcelains from Yongzheng Period of Qing Dynasty, Beijing, 2017, pl. 125.​​