Marchant are delighted to announce the exhibition of “The Bertil Högström Collection of Kangxi Blue and White Porcelain”, a fine collection of over fifty pieces of Kangxi blue and white porcelain to be shown in their gallery at 120 Kensington Church Street, coinciding with Asian Art Week in London 3rd-12th November. All the pieces in the collection are for sale and will be on display from Tuesday 1st November 2011.

Mr. Högström, a private collector from Stockholm, Sweden, started to build his collection in December 1963. He kept meticulous records of all his purchases and it is thanks to these that we know when and where he bought his pieces, mainly from the leading London dealers of the time such as Bluett & Sons and John Sparks Ltd. The majority were purchased from S. Marchant & Son.
Mr Högström set very high standards particularly regarding condition and quality. He continually upgraded the collection and there are some outstanding examples of Kangxi porcelain.

Two pieces of particular interest are the Imperial semi egg-shell wine cups, both mark and period of Kangxi. The first with “hundred butterflies” decoration, the second superbly drawn with figures and carts in a landscape scene near a walled city.

A full colour hardback illustrated catalogue of the collection is available, priced £60 plus postage.

Imperial wine cup, bei. Six-character mark of Kangxi within a double ring and of the period, circa 1690. Photo Marchant & Son

painted in a continuous landscape scene with a walled city, houses and pavilions, the foreground with two figures in front of wagons, each being pulled by a pair of oxen with an equestrian figure following, the landscape heightened with pine trees and “blobby dots”, all between double lines, the well of the interior painted with a medallion of two buildings nestled amongst trees. 3 1/8 inches, 8 cm diameter.

Formerly in the collection of Bertil J. Högström, Stockholm, Sweden, collection no. 26.

Purchased from Hugh Moss Ltd., 8th October 1974.

The pair to this cup is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Dorothy Bushell gift, (F.E. 119-1975) is illustrated by Rose Kerr in Chinese Ceramics, Porcelain of the Qing Dynasty 1644-1911. pl. 41, p. 65 where the author notes, “Imitation Ming porcelains remained popular among palace wares throughout the Qing dynasty. However, the palace also fostered the production of delicate and immaculate porcelains such as the cup in Plate 41. Thrown from a paste, which is eggshell thin and very translucent, it is decorated in a singular style by a first-rate painter. The scene of a procession of bullock carts approaching a walled town is drawn with the point of the brush, while the background is given dimension by means of splashed, diluted watery dots. The painter has cleverly used the same smudges of blue to link the main elements of the scene as to suggest distant mountains rising behind the town, thus creating an illusion of depth on a tiny surface. The shape of the cup is another revival of a classic Ming form, for this shape was first produced by the Jiajing period, 1522-1566.”

Julia B. Curtis illustrates another similar cup from a private collection in Chinese Porcelains of the Seventeenth Century, Landscapes, Scholars’ Motifs and Narratives, no. 22, pp. 76/7.

A related imperial landscape beaker cup bearing a Kangxi mark is illustrated by Wang Qingzheng in Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, no. 29, p. 40.