Lot 3235. A fine blue and white porcelain 'Three Friends' jarlet, Mark and period of Yongzheng (1723-1735); 7.7 cm., 3 in. Estimate 600,000-800,000 HKD (58,715 — 78,286 EUR). Lot sold 860,000 HKD (84,158 EUR). Photo Sotheby's

of globular form with tapering sides and a short waisted neck with a lipped rim, brightly painted around the body in shaded tones of cobalt with entwined branched of gnarled pine bearing clusters of needles, twigs of flowering prunus and bamboo sprays, the 'Three Friends of Winter', below a band of classic scrolls around the shoulder and stylised clouds encircling the neck, the recessed base inscribed with a six-character mark within double circles in underglaze-blue.  

PROVENANCE: Sotheby's Hong Kong, 14th November 1989, lot 85.

NOTE: A closely related jar was included in the Hong Kong Oriental Ceramic Society exhibition Chinese Blue and White Porcelain, Art Gallery, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1975, cat. no. 108; one from the Frederick Knight collection was sold in these rooms, 18th May 1982, lot 42; another was sold in our London rooms, 9th November 2011, lot 200; and a fourth example was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 19th January 1988, lot 316, and again in these rooms, 8th October 2008, lot 2563. For a jarlet of this type but of smaller dimensions, see a pair illustrated in John Alexander Pope, Porcelains of the Frick Collection, vol. 7, New York, 1974, pls 65.8.124 and 125; a single jar published in Ma Xigui (ed.), Beauty of Ceramics. Blue and White Porcelain, Taipei, 1993, pl. 131; and another from the Goldschmidt collection, sold in these rooms, 13th November 1990, lot 5.

Sotheby's. Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art. Hong Kong | 04 avr. 2012