Lot 50. A Ming-style blue and white bottle vase, Qianlong seal mark and period (1736-1795). Height 12 3/16 in., 30.9 cm. Estimate 40,000 — 60,000 USD. Lot sold 68,500 USD. Photo Sotheby's

with a tapering cylindrical body painted in imitation of the 'heaped and piled' effect, with ten vertical panels of alternating lotus and camellia scroll between borders of foliate meander, the sloped shoulder with a band of petal lappets and three peony stems on the neck within borders of classic scroll repeated on the spreading foot, seal mark in underglaze blue. 

Property from the Estate of William and Jennifer Shaw

Provenance: Christie's New York, 21st September 2000, lot 347.

Note: A vase of similar size with identical decoration can be found in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, illustrated in Blue and White Ware of the Ch'ing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 1968, Book II, pl.4; and another in The Metropolitan Museum of Art is illustrated by S. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, 1989 ed., p. 257, no. 260.

Sotheby's. Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art, New York, 11 september 2012