A white 'soft-paste' bottle vase. Impressed seal mark and period of Qianlong. Photo Sotheby's

well potted with a globular body rising to a tall waisted neck and on a straight foot, densely covered with incised floral scrolls with four large fanciful blooms, two with more rounded petals and two with serrated petals, all among buds and dense foliage, the neck collared by upright leaves enclosing ruyi heads, with pendent trefoils at the rim, above key-fret borders at the shoulder and the foot, the base impressed with a six-character reign mark, the cream-white body all beneath a finely crackled glaze, wood stand, 19.7 cm., 7 3/4 in. Estimate 1,500,000-2,500,000 HKD. Lot 11 unsold

PROVENANCE: Collection of Edward T. Chow, Hong Kong.
Collection of J.M. Hu, Hong Kong.
Sotheby's New York, 4th June 1985, lot 32.
Collection of Alfred Hopeman III, Hong Kong.
Eskenazi Ltd, London.

EXHIBITED: Denver Art Museum, Denver, on loan 1995-2004.
A Selection of Ming and Qing Porcelain, Eskenazi, London, 2004, cat. no. 16.

LITTERATURE: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1784.

NOTE: 'Soft-paste' porcelain, which contains admixtures of ground glass, quartz or other materials to the body clay, was originally created in Europe to imitate Chinese porcelain. While not truly 'soft' in paste, it is fired at somewhat lower temperatures than regular, so-called 'hard-paste' porcelain and has a more creamy, yellowish appearance. This effect, which differs considerably from typical Chinese porcelain, was deliberately recreated at the imperial kilns at
Jingdezhen to echo the European wares. 

A 'soft-paste' vase with a more pronounced outline and less deeply impressed mark in the Baur Collection, Geneva, is illustrated in John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, Geneva, 1999, vol. II, pl. 311; and a pair of slightly larger vases of this form, carved with a different flower design and the seal marks incised, was sold in our New York rooms, 23rd March 2004, lot 644, and again in these rooms, 8th April 2007, lot 725

Sotheby's. The Meiyintang Collection, Part III - An Important Selection of Imperial Chinese Porcelains, Hong Kong | 04 avr. 2012www.sothebys.com