Lot 3203. A gilt-decorated powder-blue ground rouleau vase, Kangxi period (1662-1722); 17 3/4 in. (45 cm.) high. Estimate HKD 300,000 - HKD 400,000. Price Realized HKD 325,000. © Christie's Images Ltd., 2010

Decorated with variously-shaped panels framing qilin amid mountainscapes below a full moon, birds perched on flowering branches of prunus and magnolia, butterflies and dragonflies amid chrysanthemum and aster, and a myriad of 'precious antiques' all reserved on a mottled blue ground enriched with borders of dense lotus scroll, the neck with shou roundels above ogival panels containing chilong dragons reserved on a cell ground.

Provenance: The Earle Morse Collection, New York.

Literature: Hugo Munsterberg, The Arts of China, Vermont and Tokyo, 1972, illustrated on the cover and as fig. 100 (a copy of which is sold together with this lot).

Note: Compare to a similar vase incorporating in the decoration an inscribed poem dated in accordance with 1709, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, Tokyo, 1977, Vol. 12, fig. 141.