Lot 3211. A Blue and White Flower and Bird Moonflask, Yongzheng Period (1723-1735). H 26.5cm. Estimate HKD 1,500,000 - 2,500,000. Sold Price: HKD 1,500,000. Copyright 2021 © Poly Auction Hong Kong Limited

The flask is delicately painted in cobalt of sapphire-blue tone with simulated 'heaping and piling' effect. One side of the compressed circular body is painted with two magpies perched on a branch, entwined with a twig of bamboo. The reverse side is similarly decorated with two birds on a leafy branch of a fruit tree emerging from a craggy rock, while the shoulder is further decorated with a band of ruyi head lappets. The side arched handles are decorated with S-scroll motifs. The elegant cylindrical tall neck is painted with further bamboo stems under double circles below the mouth rim. The underside of the base is unglazed and slightly concave.

Provenance: Sotheby’s London, 8 July 1975, lot 179.

Note: The present rare moonflask follows faithfully the design of those in the early Ming, Yongle period, and are very comparable to two examples: the first in the National Palace Museum Collection, illustrated in Blue-and-White Ware of the Ming Dynasty, Book I, Hong Kong, CAFA, 1963, pp. 58-59, pls. 9, 9a and 9b; and the other in the Percival David Foundation, housed at the British Museum, illustrated by R. Scott, Elegant Form and Harmonious Decoration Four Dynasties of Jingdezhen Porcelain, London, 1992, p. 42, no. 29. The decoration of the bird perched on a branch on each side of the compressed body with bamboo sprays on the splayed neck shares resonance of the Ming prototype.

A comparable example of this flask is in the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics, Leeuwarden, illustrated by D. Lion-Goldschmidt, Ming Porcelain, Fribourg, 1978, p. 47, no. 13, where the author questioned its 15th century dating, and is currently dated by the museum as Yongzheng period.

Revival of this bird-on-branch motif also appeared in the Yongzheng period with known larger examples in the collection of Robert Chang, sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 2 November 1999, lot 521, with an effaced reign mark, now in the Alan Chuang Collection, illustrated in The Alan Chuang Collection of Chinese Porcelain, Hong Kong, 2009, p. 113, no. 34 (36.5 cm. high); and in the Palace Museum Collection, illustrated in Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (III), The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 2000, p. 111, no. 97, 36.5 cm. high with a six-character Yongzheng mark in underglaze blue.