A rare wucai openwork 'lingzhi' box and cover. Mark and period of Wanli - Sotheby's

of rectangular form supported on four shaped corner feet, with slanted sides widening towards the flanged rims, the cover decorated in a wucai palette with a barbed lozenge-shaped panel containing multi-coloured lingzhi sprays among a dense foliage, the design conforming to a lightly incised outline under the glaze, with small holes pierced in between and single fungus heads at the four corners, the sides and the feet similarly painted with lingzhi scrolls, the flanged rims picked out with a thin red and blue 'classic' scroll border, the base unglazed, centred with a horizontal glazed cartouche inscribed in underglaze blue with a six-character reign mark within a double square; 21 by 14.7 cm., 8 1/4  by 5 3/4  in. Estimation: 1,300,000 - 1,800,000 HKD

PROVENANCE: Collection of Dr. A.E. Cumberbatch (1910).
Christie’s London, 9th June 1997, lot 87.
Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 7th May 2002, lot 549

EXHIBITED: Early Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1910, no. H 33 (catalogue published 1911, illustrated col. pl. XL).

LITTERATURE: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1705.

NOTE: Another Wanli box of this form and design from the Holger Lauritzen collection in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics. The World’s Great Collections, Tokyo, New York, and San Francisco, 1980–82, vol. 8, no. 249; one in the Matsuoka Museum of Art, Tokyo, is published in Ty tji meihin zuroku [Catalogue of masterpieces of Oriental ceramics], Matsuoka Bijutsukan, Tokyo, 1991, col. pl. 99; one in the Shanghai Museum is published in Lu Minghua, Shanghai Bowuguan zangpin yanjiu daxi/Studies of the Shanghai Museum Collections : A Series of Monographs. Mingdai guanyao ciqi [Ming imperial porcelain], Shanghai, 2007, pl. 1-89; and one with slightly different colouration, later in the Jingguantang collection, Hong Kong, was sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 13th November 1990, lot 151.

Sotheby's. The Meiyintang Collection, Part V - An Important Selection of Imperial Chinese Porcelains. Hong Kong | 08 avr. 2013 - www.sothebys.com