Lot 3047. A fine and very rare iron-red and black enamel decorated 'Immortals' bowl, Kangxi six-character mark within a double-circle and of the period (1662-1722). Estimate 800,000 - HKD 1,200,000 (USD 103,477 - USD 155,215). Price realised HKD 1,460,000 (USD 188,778). Photo: Christie's Images Ltd. 2010

Finely painted around the exterior of the bowl in shades of iron-red with fourteen Immortals and a deer in iron-red highlighted with black enamel, one figure conjuring a black and white crane from a double gourd, also including Shoulao standing holding a staff and Dongfang Shuo holding a peach branch over his shoulder, the Immortals variously holding a root-wood staff, lingzhi scepter, bowl of fruits, fly-whisk and two holding an open scroll painted with a yin yang symbol, the details of their faces, hair and clothes picked out in black enamel, the interior glazed white - 6 5/8 in. (17 cm.) diam., box

Provenance: A Japanese private collection 

Note: A similar Immortal bowl with fourteen figures, one being an attendant, all between underglaze-blue double-lines, from the Qing court collection, Beijing, is illustrated in Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 1999, pl. 118; while another was included in the Oriental Ceramic Society exhibition Iron in the Fire, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1988, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 79.

Christie's. Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, 1 December 2010, Hong Kong