Lot 6004. Property from an old Hong Kong family collection. A fine and exceedingly rare blue and white 'lotus’ mantouxin bowl, Mark and period of Xuande (1426-1435); 17.2 cm, wood stand. Lot Sold 5,120,000 HKD (Estimate 2,500,000 - 3,500,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2026

Note: Expertly painted in rich, contrasting tones of cobalt blue, this exceptional bowl exemplifies the celebrated aesthetics of blue-and-white porcelain produced at the imperial kilns in Jingdezhen during the Xuande period (1426–1435). Under the direct patronage of the Emperor, himself a painter and a dedicated connoisseur of the arts, the imperial workshops achieved a peak phase of porcelain creation. The complex, meticulously balanced layout of this piece perfectly reflects the refined taste and innovative spirit of the early Ming court, capturing the classic depth and "heaped and piled" character of the period's most admired wares.

Bowls of this form are known as mantou xin ("steamed bun center") due to its distinctive domed interior, derives from Middle Eastern Mamluk metalwork that arrived in China via maritime trade routes. In the records of early Ming porcelain, only one almost identical example of this exact design and size seems to have appeared, the Riesco Xuande bowl which was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 27 November 2013, lot 3110, which suggests that the two could have been created as a pair.

Unlike the continuous, all-over pattern of scrolling lotus on the interior of the present bowl, the extant examples feature an additional narrow band of floral scroll around the central dome but lack the prominent frieze of scrolling lotus above, leaving a broad band of undecorated white space across the cavetto. Furthermore, the cash diaper band at the interior rim has been replaced by a classic scroll, and the exterior base is surrounded by overlapping lappets instead of the two decorative bands seen on the current bowl. See a Yongle example bearing such decoration excavated from the Yongle stratum at Dongmentou, Zhushan in Jingdezhen, illustrated in Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Taipei, 1996, pl. 83.

For Xuande mark and period examples adhering to this layout, compare an example in the Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, pp. 296-297, no. 121; another in the Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, illustrated by D. Lion Goldschmidt, La Porcelaine Ming, 1978, p. 102, pl. 75; a third in the Umezawa Memorial Hall, Tokyo, illustrated in Sekai Toji Zenshu, vol. 14, Tokyo, 1976, p. 159, fig. 20; and a fourth example sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 1st November 2004, lot 1074; and another sold in these rooms, 8th October 2008, lot 2544.

An Old Hong Kong Family Collection
Passed down through the family from the present owner’s grandfather, this collection has its beginnings in the life and interests of an industrialist from a prominent East Asian family. Raised in an environment steeped in the culture of connoisseurship, he began acquiring works of art in the 1920s. His interests ranged widely, encompassing painting and calligraphy, epigraphic and scholar’s objects, ceramics, and the many refined pursuits of the cultivated studio.

Works from the collection were lent to museums for exhibition, while selected pieces were illustrated in publications produced in collaboration with fellow collectors, opening the collection to a wider circle of connoisseurs. After the Second World War, his business interests extended to Hong Kong, and his life came to be divided between Hong Kong and his home country. The ceramics offered here are principally from the Ming and Qing dynasties. For decades, they were displayed throughout the family residence, built in Hong Kong in the 1940s, among its living rooms and studies, quietly accompanying the daily life of a family shaped by taste, scholarship, and the pleasures of collecting.

Lot 6009. Property from an old Hong Kong family collection. A fine and rare blue and white ‘floral’ stem cup, dou, Mark and period of Xuande (1426-1435); h2 10.1 cm, wood stand. Lot Sold 1,536,000 HKD (Estimate 1,200,000 - 1,800,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2026

Note: Stem cups of this globular form, with an inward curved rather than the flared rim, probably belong to the wide range of Yongle and Xuande porcelain shapes that derive their inspiration from Middle Eastern metalwork, and the petal borders above and below the waist of the stem seem to imitate gadrooning of the metal examples. Stem cups have a long tradition in Iran and were introduced to China prior to the Tang dynasty. Compare several Iranian stem cups of the 13th and 14th centuries, but without gadroons, in Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani, Islamic Metalwork from the Iranian World. 8th-18th Centuries, London, 1982, p. 147, fig. 53, and cat. nos 71, 72, 84 and 85.

The elegant carnation design was rarely used in the Ming dynasty, but was similarly found on blue-and-white tankards of Xuande mark and period, which equally follow a Middle Eastern form; see an example in the Taipei Palace Museum, illustrated in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, Palace Museum, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 12.

Fragments of a porcelain prototype in monochrome white, with a more accentuated, stepped foot, were recovered from the Yongle stratum of the imperial kiln sites in Jingdezhen; see Imperial Porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande Periods Excavated from the Site of the Ming Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1989, cat. no. 12.

A similar stem cup in the British Museum, London, is published in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, pl. 4: 21; one in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics. The World's Great Collections, Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, 1980-82, vol. 10, pl. 219; one from the Sir Percival David Collection in the British Museum, London, ibid., vol. 6, pl. 90; one in the Capital Museum, Beijing, in Shoudu Bowuguan cang ci xuan [Selection of porcelains from the Capital Museum], Beijing, 1991, pl. 96; and one in the National Museum of China, Beijing, in Zhongguo Guojia Bowuguan guancang wenwu yanjiu congshu, Ciqi juan: Mingdai, Shanghai, 2007, pl. 34. See also an example formerly in the collections of Mr & Mrs R.H.R. Palmer, Eskenazi and Meiyintang, sold in these rooms, 5th October 2011, lot 27; and another from the the Yin Xue Tang Collection, sold in these rooms, 8th April 2023, lot 20.

Stem cups of this form are also known with covers, all of them surprisingly poorly fitted to the opening of the cups; see two examples in the Taipei Palace Museum, in the exhibition catalogues Mingdai Xuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu, op. cit., cat. no. 8, and Catalogue of a Special Exhibition of Hsuan-te Period Porcelain, Taipei, 1980, cat. no. 25; one in the Beijing Palace Museum, from the Qing court collection, included in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang Ming chu qinghua ci, Beijing, 2002, vol. 2, pl. 105; another in the Shanghai Museum, see Lu Minghua, Shanghai Studies of the Shanghai Museum Collections: A Series of Monographs. Mingdai guanyao ciqi, Shanghai, 2007, pl. 3-29; or the example in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., published in Oriental Ceramics, op. cit., vol. 9, pl. 101. A fragmentary blue-and-white stem cup and cover of this design were also excavated from the waste heaps of the Ming imperial kiln site at Zhushan, Jingdezhen, see Jingdezhen chutu Ming Xuande guanyao ciqi/Xuande Imperial Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 27.

Lot 6046. Property from an old Hong Kong family collection. An extremely rare and superb blue and white 'lotus scroll' vase, yuhuchunping, Ming dynasty, 15th century; 30.3 cm. Lot Sold 1,920,000 HKD (Estimate 1,000,000 - 2,000,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2026

Provenance: Collection of Y.C. Chen (1922-2012).

Christie's Hong Kong, 29th May 2013, lot 1936.

Note: The 15th century witnessed a fascinating evolution in porcelain production; initially heavily influenced by the attractive style of the Xuande reign, the potters gradually developed a distinctive, sophisticated style by making a deliberate move away from earlier models, perhaps most evident in the idiosyncratic forms and designs that were developed. The present vase is a fine and unique example of such transformation; while its motifs and form are rooted in traditions established from the beginning of the Ming dynasty.

Veiled with a lustrous silky glaze, this vase is a quintessential 15th-century creation. ‘Softer’ to the touch than its predecessors, it marks the move away from the crisp and glossy glazes of the finest Xuande wares and towards the muted, velvety glaze of the famous Chenghua palace bowls. It is interesting to compare the current vase to two meiping decorated with vibrant foliate scrolls, which can be attributed to the early years of Chenghua through their glaze and cobalt that are closer to the Xuande type; see a pair from the collection of Robert C. Bruce, sold in our London rooms, 12th May 1953, lot 87, one of which entered the H.R.N. Norton and J.T. Tai collections, and sold in our London rooms, 5th November 1963, lot 160, and again in these rooms, 8th October 2010, lot 2622, the other sold in our London rooms, 1st/2nd April 1974, lot 197, and again in these rooms, 16th May 1989, lot 18, from the British Rail Pension Fund. These meiping were reunited briefly in the 1970s at Hugh Moss Ltd, when both were illustrated together in Adrian Joseph, Ming Porcelain: Their Origins and Development, London, 1971, pl. 39.

The undulating lingzhi scroll on the neck finds a close parallel in a line drawing of a mid-15th century motif, which similarly features an outlined stem and leaves emerging from behind the fungus, published in Geng Baochang, Ming Qing ciqi jianding [Appraisal of Ming and Qing Porcelains], Hong Kong, 1993, fig. 175 (middle right).

For other related and larger vessels dated to the Chenghua period, see a pear-shaped vase decorated with similarly rendered lotus scrolls, on a tall flared foot and flanked with handles, from the collection of L.A. Basmadgieff, sold in our London rooms, 11th December 1979, lot 278, and again in these rooms, 8th April 2011, lot 3199; a bottle vase painted with phoenix among lotus scrolls, published in The Emperor's Broken China: Reconstructing Chenghua Porcelain, pl. 47, together with a fragmentary ewer, pl. 48; and a lobed vase, from the Qing Court collection and still in Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (II), Shanghai, 2000, pl. 1. Compare also a meiping attributed to the Chenghua period, included in Geng Baochang, op. cit., p. 88, fig. 150, together with a guan jar, fig. 152; and a ‘lotus bud’ vase, col. pl. 33 and fig. 151, offered in our New York rooms, 20th March 2018, lot 113.

Lot 6013. Property from an old Hong Kong family collection. A pair of blue and white 'phoenix' square bowls, Marks and period of Jiajing (1522-1566);9.9 and 9.7 cm. Lot Sold 166,400 HKD (Estimate 100,000 - 150,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2026

Lot 6083. Property from an old Hong Kong family collection. A pair of blue and white 'floral scroll' bowls, Marks and period of Wanli (1573-1620); each 10.9 cm. Lot Sold 140,800 HKD (Estimate 80,000 - 120,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2026

Note: An almost identical pair of blue and white bowls from the T.Y. Chao collection was sold in these rooms, 22nd May 1986, lot 52. Similar ‘Indian lotus’ can be seen on a deeper Chenghua bowl included in the Illustrated Catalogue of Ming Dynasty Porcelain in the Palace Museum, pl. 10.