A good Chinese Transitional blue and white ‘qilin and phoeni...

Hammer

£48,000

A good Chinese Transitional blue and white ‘qilin and phoenix’ jar and cover, lianzi guan, Chongzhen period (1627-1644), finely painted with a phoenix in flight and a seated qilin with flaming pearl, in a garden landscape with banana plantains, a fence with blurry dot panels, rockwork and flowers, between incised bands of flowers and scrolls and waves, the neck painted with leaf lappets, the domed cover painted with a rabbit gazing at the moon amid rockwork and flowers within an incised floral band matching the jar, on a circular foot, 28.3cm high, the neck 14cm diameter, hongmu stand,

cf. Teresa Canepa and Katharine Butler, Leaping the Dragon Gate,
The Sir Michael Butler Collection of Seventeenth-Century Chinese Porcelain for examples of decoration typical of the Chongzhen period which they describe as ‘High Transitional’. These include banana plantains, V-shaped patches of grass, rice-clusters by layered rocks incorporating dotted lines or washes in shades of blue and Chunye dian (chun tree) leaves which can all be seen on this jar and cover. chips to inner flange of cover

More Information

Provenance - UK private collection, 1920s or earlier, thence by family descent.
This collection of late Ming and Qing dynasty porcelain and bronze vessels has been owned by a single Cotswold family for a number of generations dating back to the 1920s or earlier.
The collection was formerly on display at the family home in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, UK before the house was sold in the 1980s. Some interior photos taken c.1982 show a number of the pieces on display in the family house and an inventory undertaken in 1948 by the local Campden auctioneer and valuer Alfred Bower lists many of the items. Extracts of the 1948 inventory are included where they correspond to the relevant lots in the sale.

There are two small chips to the inner flange of the cover. There is some scratching and wear to the glaze in areas, some abrasion to the inner edge of the unglazed rim and an overglazed firing crack to the interior base of the jar not visible on the underside, in good condition with no restoration or cracks detected.