Lot 3435. A green and yellow-enamelled 'boys' bowl, Yongzheng six-character mark within double circles and of the period (1723-1735); 6 in. (15.1 cm) diam. Estimate HKD 300,000 - HKD 500,000. Price Realized HKD 937,500. © Christie's Images Ltd 2013 

The bowl is delicately incised around the exterior with boys playing musical instruments forming a procession on a terraced garden between a band of petal lappets below a foliate band above. It is covered with a green enamel reserved against a lemon-yellow ground. 

Provenance: A Japanese private collection
Previously sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 8 October 2008, lot 2511.

Note: Yongzheng bowls with this type of decoration are seen with two different bands around the rim. Some have floral borders with demi-florettes, as seen on the present lot, while others have quatrefoil panels.

A Yongzheng bowl of this design is illustrated in Chinese Porcelain, The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong, 1987, pl. 103; one illustrated by J. Ayers, Chinese Ceramics, The Koger Collection, London and New York, 1985, pl. 121; another is illustrated by J. Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, Geneva, 1999, vol. 2, pl. 203. Similar bowls with different border at the mouth rims are also published: one in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Miscellaneous Enamelled Procelains, The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Shanghai, 2009, pl. 100; one in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrated by R. Kerr, Chinese Ceramics, Porcelain of the Qing Dynasty 1644-1911, London, 1986, front cover; and a pair sold at Christie's London, 21 June 2001, lot 102

Christie's. Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art (Including The Su Zhu An Collection of Inkstones), Hong Kong, 27 November 2013