ONE PORCELAIN VASE KANGXI PERIOD (1661-1722), THE OTHER 18TH/19TH CENTURY, THE ORMOLU MOUNTS POSSIBLY AUSTRIAN OR ENGLISH, SECOND QUARTER 19TH CENTURY

These two impressive famille verte vases are united as a pair by their refined gilt-bronze mounts, but were produced by different hands, with the slightly older vase bearing the mark of the rarefied Mushi Ju workshop in Jingdezhen. Although this workshop, whose name means ‘Studio of Wood and Stone’, has been a subject of scholarly inquiry since the 1990s, only recently has the identity of its master potter and owner, as well as its uncommonly close relationship with the broader literati arts, become known. Pengliang Lu, studying the inscriptions to a blue and white vase now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (obj. no. 2020.73.6), determines that the Mushi Ju studio was a private enterprise owned by a local official, Zhao Wenzong, who was well-connected among artists, calligraphers and poets, and its output indeed embodies the literati spirit, in the medium of porcelain. Known works from the studio reveal a keen interest in the combined arts, with the Metropolitan Museum vase standing out as an exceptional example. The vase preserves a literary gathering which took place in Jingdezhen probably in the 1690s, alternating views of famous local sites with the poetry of a visiting official and two local scholars. Zhao, who was in attendance, painted the vase in commemoration of the occasion, titling it at the underside 'A Poetry Gathering by the Changjiang, a River in Jingdezhen', adding a verse of his own composition, and signing his creation with his sobriquet and the Mushi Ju seal. Lu remarks upon this as an unprecedented fusion of poetry with ceramics, and draws from it a picture of the advancement in status of the private potter in the late seventeenth century—a period during which, he writes, "some artists themselves became literati." For an in-depth discussion of Mushi Ju, see P. Lu, "Where Potter Met Poets, A Kangxi Vase with a Poetry Gathering in Jingdezhen", Arts of Asia, March-April 2017, pp. 98-104; and "Recent Acquisitions", The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 78, no. 3, winter 2021, pp. 34-35.

The Aitken vase is of a similar spirit to the Metropolitan Museum vase, in which the painting to each side is paired inextricably with the verse inscribed above it. The poem in a quatrefoil reserve, for example, begins 日暮堂前花蕊嬌，手拈小筆上床描 ("At dusk before the hall the flower buds are fair / she picks up her slender brush and bends over the bed to draw"), while the scene below is painted with a beauty at her writing implements, raising her brush above a flower-painted scroll in her lap. On the opposite side, a lady in a leaf-shaped reserve sits on a balcony fanning away insects, while the poem above describes 豆蔻花間蝶翅肥，輕紈撲處損香衣 ("Among clove blossoms butterflies with heavy wings / waving a gauzy silk, she brushes her fragrant robe"). Each poetic inscription then concludes with the Mushi Ju mark in iron red.

Further works of art from the Mushi Ju workshop include two famille verte brushpots each also pairing poetic inscription with painting, one dated 1712 and formerly in the collection of Marcel Proust, sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 11 September 2019, lot 906; and another from the Jie Rui Tang Collection, sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 20 March 2018, lot 310. A third brushpot was more recently sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 22 March 2023, lot 580, and another, from the Ernest Grandidier Collection and dated 1709, is in the collection of the Musée Guimet, Paris (inv. no. G 4217).