Lot 2578. A fine and rare copper-red decorated waterpot, Mark and period of Kangxi (1662-1722);  9.7 cm., 3 7/8 in. Estimate 400,000 — 600,000 HKD. Lot Sold 920,000 HKD. Photo Sotheby's 2008

the finely potted apple-shaped body with rounded sides rising to the shoulder with an inturned mouth and inverted rim, elegantly painted in pencilled lines of deep tones of copper-red with four detached sprays of lotus, hibiscus, chrysanthemum and peony, each large flowerhead wreathed with dense scrolls of curling foliage, all above a narrow band of triangular leaves around the foot between underglaze-blue line borders, the inner slope of the mouth with a classic scroll also enclosed within blue line borders, the countersunk base inscribed with the six-character mark.

Provenance: Sotheby's Hong Kong, 15th November 1988, lot 259.

Note: A very closely related waterpot finely painted in copper-red from the Collection of C.P. Lin was included in the Percival David Foundation, London exhibition Elegant Form and Harmonious Decoration, London, 1992, cat.no. 113, which was previously sold in these rooms 28th November 1979, lot 221, and also illustrated in Sotheby's Hong Kong, Twenty Years: 1973-1993, Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 88.

Another waterpot of similar design is illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. II, London, 1994, cat.no. 733, where the author identifies the stylised flower sprays as peony, lotus, chrysanthemum and hibiscus; another one in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong: Qing Porcelain from the Palace Museum Collection, Beijing, 1989, pl. 22; a pair in Sekai Toji Zenshu, vol. 12, Tokyo, 1977, pl. 26; one in the Shanghai Museum in Underglaze Blue and Red: Elegant decoration of Porcelain from Yuan, Ming and Qing, Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 118; and one illustrated in The Communion of Scholars, New York, 1982, cat.no. 37.

Compare also a similar example sold in these rooms, 1st November 1994, lot 173; and the waterpot from the Edward T. Chow Collection, now in the Hong Kong Museum of Art, of the same pattern but with the Kangxi reign mark incised on the base where the glaze has been ground away, which was sold in these rooms, 19th May 1981, lot 540 and included in The Wonders of the Potter's Palette, Hong Kong, 1984, cat.no. 10; one from the Collection of the Xuantong emperor, sold in our New York rooms, 16th April 1983, lot 488; and one from the Yuen Family Collection, sold in these rooms, 23rd October 2005, lot 352.

Sotheby's. Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art. 08 Oct 08. Hong Kong