KANGXI SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE AND OF THE PERIOD (1662-1722)

This type of seal paste box represents one of the ba da ma or 'Eight Great Numbers', a group of eight specific vessels covered in a distinctive peachbloom glaze. The glaze appears to have been developed during the Kangxi period, and is characterized by blushes of red against a soft pink base color, sometimes with clear greenish or greyish mottled areas, giving an impression of delicate blushing skin or fruit ripening in the sun. This ‘blushing’ or ‘peachbloom’ effect was very complex to produce, requiring colorants to be blown onto a surface covered with transparent glaze, which was then applied with an additional layer of transparent glaze before being fired at high temperature.

Similar peachbloom seal paste boxes are in various museum collections, including the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Kangxi Yongzheng Qianlong, Hong Kong, 1989, p. 141, col. pl. 124; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated by S. Valenstein in A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1975, pl. 237, no. 237; and the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the Special Exhibition of Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong Porcelain, 1988, no. 11.