Lot 42. A red and green 'lotus and lingzhi' double-gourd vase, Mark and period of Jiajing (1522-1566); 20.8 cm, 8 1/4 in. Estimate 3,400,000 - 3,800,000 HKD. Lot sold 5,060,000 HKD. Photo Sotheby's

with a broader lower bulb supporting a smaller bulb, each painted with wide continuous bands of scrolling lotus borne on a foliate stem, with a lingzhi scroll around the waist and a 'classic' scroll encircling the shoulder, the designs drawn with outlines of deep iron red, filled in with an iron-red wash and reserved on a bright green ground, with narrow white bands left free to separate the different registers, the base left white and inscribed with a six-character reign mark within a double ring in underglaze blue

Provenance: Sotheby’s London, 12th June 1990, lot 241.
Eskenazi Ltd, London.

Exhibited: Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, The British Museum, London, 1994.
Evolution to Perfection. Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection/Evolution vers la perfection. Céramiques de Chine de la Collection Meiyintang, Sporting d’Hiver, Monte Carlo, 1996, cat. no. 132.

Literature: Nuno de Castro, E cerâmica e a porcelana Chinesas, Porto, 1992, vol. 2, pl. 59.
Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 2, no. 707.

Note: Brightly coloured porcelains with vivid designs on a contrasting ground were a speciality of the Jiajing reign (AD 1522-66), when many new colour combinations were experimented with. Red and green enamels were not used together in this way before the Jiajing period, and rarely thereafter. A similar vase from the Ataka collection in the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, is illustrated together with a related vase with blue-and-red flower scrolls on a yellow ground in Tōyō tōji no tenkai/Masterpieces of Oriental Ceramics, The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 1999, pls. 54 and 53.

Two similar red-and-green vases are in the British Museum, London, from the Bloxam collection and the collection of Sir Percival David, see Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, pl. 9: 94; and the exhibition catalogue Ceramic Evolution in the Middle Ming Period, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London, 1994-5, cat. no. 12; one from the Eumorfopoulos collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is illustrated in John Ayers, Far Eastern Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1980, no. 164; another in the Musée Guimet, Paris, from the Grandidier collection, is published in Daisy Lion-Goldschmidt, Ming Porcelain, London, 1978, pl. 12.