Lot 7. From the Private Collection of Joseph Lau. A rare incised white-glazed 'monk's cap' ewer, Ming dynasty, Yongle period  (1402-1424); 19.5 cm. Lot sold: 6,300,000 HKD (Estimate: 5,000,000 - 7,000,000 HKD). © Sotheby's 2022.

with the compressed globular body supported on a low slightly splayed foot, surmounted by a flaring cylindrical neck and a stepped, galleried 'monk's cap' rim with a small loop on the inside to attach a cover, set with a deep channelled spout opposite a curved strap handle with a raised ridge down the centre and a ruyi-head tab and terminal, finely incised around the centre with an undulating lotus scroll with blooms supporting the bajixiang emblems, above a band of lingzhi lappets, all below further lotus scrolls encircling the rim and the neck, and vertical lingzhi sprays on either side of the spout and the handle, the inner rim further incised with scrolling lotus and the foot decorated with a 'classic' scroll band.

Literature: Sotheby's Hong Kong – Twenty Years, Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 136.

Note: Porcelain ewers of this form appear to have been produced since the Yuan dynasty and became a standard vessel shape of the imperial kilns in the Yongle reign. This type of white-glazed ewers was made for Tibetan Buddhist rituals performed either at court in the then capital, Nanjing, or in Tibet proper. The Emperor actively supported Tibetan Buddhism, and in 1407 he invited the most influential lama Halima (1384-1415) to the capital Nanjing to perform religious services for his deceased parents. Halima, bestowed with the title Dabao Fawang (Great Precious Religious Ruler) by the Emperor, was the Tibetan religious leader of the Karma-pa sect. The Emperor commissioned lavish gifts from the imperial workshops for this occasion.

More than fifty porcelain ewers of this form, either incised or undecorated, were recovered from stratum five of the Yongle waste heaps of the Ming imperial kilns site, believed to date from around 1407. See a fragmentary monk's cap ewer incised with lingzhi and floral scrolls published in Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1996, cat. no. 99; and another in the Tibet Museum, Lhasa, illustrated in Treasures from Snow Mountain. Gems of Tibetan Cultural Relics, Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, 2001, cat. no. 88.

Yongle ewers with similar incised designs are in the British Museum, London, illustrated in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics, London, 2001, p. 98, pl. 3:2, where the author explains that 'vessels of this shape are known as monk's cap ewers, possibly because the lip and spout of the ewer resemble the stepped profile of the yellow hat of a Tibetan lamaist monk; and in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, from the collection of H.M. King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden published in The World's Great Collections. Chinese Ceramics, vol. 8, Tokyo, 1982, pl. 207. An ewer of this type, but without the anhua decoration, from the Qing court collection and still in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is published in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Monochrome Porcelain, Hong Kong, 1999, pl. 100.

Yongle monk's cap ewers have also been sold at auction, see a bajixiang-decorated example, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 29th May 2007, lot 1479; another example with bajixiang, but engraved with a reign mark, sold in these rooms, 31st October 1995, lot 357; and a plain ewer, formerly in the collection of Shah Jahan of India, sold in our London rooms, 7th November 2012, lot 318.

'Monk’s cap' ewers derive their shape from Tibetan ewers made of metal or wood, which were probably placed in front of altars filled with provisions or with water for use in ablutions, as is suggested in a somewhat later Tibetan painted textile depicting Avalokiteshvara and other deities behind an altar set with bowls of fruit, a flower vase, pear-shaped bottles and a monk’s cap ewer, illustrated in Defining Yongle. Imperial Art in Early Fifteenth-Century China, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005, cat. no. 36.

For a white Yuan prototype of this form but of different proportions, excavated from a tomb in Haidian district, Beijing, and now in the Capital Museum, Beijing, see Zhongguo taoci quanji [Complete series on Chinese ceramics], Shanghai, 1999-2000, vol. 11, pl. 62.

Sotheby's. Gems of Imperial Porcelain from the Private Collection of Joseph Lau, Hong Kong, 29 April 2022