Lot 35. An extremely rare blue and white anhua 'phoenix' bowl, mark and period of Xuande (1426-1435); 21 cm. 8 1/4  in. Estimate 900,000 - 1,200,000 HKD (88,861 — 118,482 EUR). Lot sold 937,500 HKD (92,564 EUR). Courtesy Sotheby's

the deep rounded sides supported on a slightly tapered foot and rising to a wide everted rim, painted in bright underglaze cobalt accented with 'heaping and piling', the interior with a phoenix roundel with a male bird confronting a female bird among lotus scrolls, distinguished by their plain and serrated tail feathers, below a faint anhua decoration of phoenix and lotus around the inside walls and a 'classic' scroll border at the rim, the exterior densely painted with a couple of large phoenix gliding among scrolling lotus with fully outstretched wings, above a band of petal lappets skirting the foot, the base inscribed in underglaze blue with a six-character mark within a double ring.

PROVENANCE: Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 5th November 1996, lot 744.
J.J. Lally & Co., New York.

LITERATURE: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1659.

NOTE: This design, which might appear to be a classic pattern of the Xuande repertoire, is in fact extremely rare and no exact companion piece appears to have been published. A very similar, but much smaller bowl, apparently lacking the anhua on the inside, discarded at the time and now excavated at the waste heaps of the Ming imperial kiln site, was included in the exhibition Jingdezhen chutu Yuan Ming guanyao ciqi/Yuan’s and Ming’s Imperial Porcelain Unearthed from Jingdezhen, Yan-Huang Art Museum, Beijing, 1999, cat. no. 134 (fig. 1), together with dragon-decorated counterpart with more complex design inside, cat. no. 133, and a Chenghua version of the phoenix design, cat. no. 293.

Blue and white bowl with phoenix and lotus, mark and period of Xuande. Excavated from the Ming imperial kiln site at Jingdezhen. After: Jingdezhen chutu Yuan Ming guanyao ciqi/Yuan’s and Ming’s Imperial Porcelain Unearthed from Jingdezhen, Yan-Huang Art Museum, Beijing, 1999, cat. no. 134.

The same phoenix design is found also on a bowl of different proportions, narrower and deeper, in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, see Mingdai Xuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu/Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 59 (fig. 2), and is similarly seen on dishes, for example, ibid., cat. no. 192.

Blue and white bell-shaped bowl with phoenix and flowers, mark and period of Xuande, National Palace Museum, Taipei. After: Mingdai Xuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu/Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 59.

A bowl of similar form and size as the present piece, and with the same design on the outside but a cloud motif and classic scroll only on the inside, formerly in the collection of Richard Bryant Hobart, is published in Fujioka Ryoichi and Hasebe Gakuji, Sekai tōji zenshū/Ceramic Art of the World, vol. 14: Min/Ming Dynasty, Tokyo, 1976, col. pls. 23 and 24, and was sold in our New York rooms, 12th December 1969, lot 257.

The elaborately painted lotus petals below the phoenixes were developed in the Yongle period, and a similar Yongle bowl decorated with dragons, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, again with a cloud motif and classic scroll only on the inside, is illustrated in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang Ming chu qinghua ci [Early Ming blue-and-white porcelain in the Palace Museum], Beijing, 2002, vol. 1, pl. 46.

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