Lot 3098. A rare doucai 'Lotus' jar and cover, Qing dynasty, Kangxi-Yongzeng period (1662-1735); 14.3 cm, 5 3/8  in. Estimate 900,000 — 1,400,000 HKD. Lot sold 51.240,000 HKD. Photo: Sotheby's 2013.

in the Chenghua style, the ovoid body decorated in underglaze-blue and green, iron-red and yellow enamels within blue outlines with five barbed quatrefoil panels enclosing lotus scrolls with flowers in pale iron-red further wreathed in green curling foliage, interspersed above and below with red lotus and yellow lingzhi, the shoulders and base with radiating borders of petals pencilled in underglaze-blue with iron-red outlines, the shallow domed cover with formal scrolling flowers in a quatrefoil panel enclosing the bud knop within four yellow flower sprigs, the base with an apocryphal Chenghua mark.

Provenance: Sotheby's London, 12th June 1990, lot 340.

Note: A jar of this type, but the cover painted with a denser flower scroll and with a Yongzheng reign mark and of the period, from the British Rail Pension Fund, was sold twice in these rooms, 29th November 1977, lot 189, and again, 16th May 1989, lot 67; and another with an apocryphal Chenghua reign mark, but with a cylindrical cover, included in the Hong Kong Oriental Ceramic Society Exhibition of Ch’ing Polychrome Porcelain, Fung Ping Shan Museum, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1977, cat. no. 47, was sold in these rooms, 20th November 1984, lot 500.

Sotheby's. Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art. Hong Kong, 08 Oct 2013