A copper-red 'beehive' brush washer. Xuande six-character mark, Kangxi. Photo Bonhams

Thickly potted with rounded sides tapering to a short open neck, finely painted in rich underglaze copper-red with the Queen Mother of the West in her chariot drawn by a deer and accompanied by a female attendant and a crane amid rocks and plants, fitted box. 11.5cm (4½in) diam. (2). Estimate: £20,000 - 30,000, CNY 200,000 - 300,000, HK$ 240,000 - 360,000

Provenance: Sotheby's London, 5 December 1995, lot 437
The Inder Rieden Collection

It is unusual to find a piece painted with figures in this copper-red colour; produced only during the Kangxi period and also known as 'peach-bloom', it is used more typically as an overall covering on small porcelain pieces; see, for example, the beehive brushpot in the Tsui Museum of Art, Catalogue, Chinese Ceramics IV: Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 1995, no.7. For a small basin painted with a floral design in underglaze-red in the Shanghai Museum, see Wang Qingzheng ed., Underglaze Blue & Red, Shanghai, no.118.

Bonhams. Fine Chinese Art, 10 Nov 2011, New Bond Street www.bonhams.com