A RARE FOURTEENTH CENTURY SLIP-DECORATED BLUE AND WHITE STEMCUP

YUAN/HONGWU DYNASTY

细节
A RARE FOURTEENTH CENTURY SLIP-DECORATED BLUE AND WHITE STEMCUP
Yuan/Hongwu Dynasty
The sides fluidly painted in vibrant underglaze blue with a single three-clawed dragon striding around the body in pursuit of a flaming pearl between single line borders of paler, grayer tone, with a band of loose classic scroll painted on the everted rim and a chrysanthemum medallion in the center, the interior walls crisply slip-decorated with the character yu and two four-clawed dragons pursuing further flaming pearls, the whole raised on a spreading conical stem foot slightly ribbed and incised as if in imitation of bamboo, the white glaze with a pale blue tint
3.7/8in. (9.8cm.) high, box
来源
Yamanaka & Co.

拍品专文

Compare a similar stemcup from the Palmer Collection illustrated by Sir Harry Garner, Oriental Blue and White, London, 1954, pl. 2A and by E. E. Bluett, 'Chinese Works of Art in English Collections: The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. R.H.R. Palmer - I', Apollo, April 1958, pl. 160, fig. VIII(c), later sold in our Hong Kong salesroom, January 17, 1989, lot 561, and now in the Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, illustrated by John Ayers in the Catalogue, 1990, no. 57. Compare, also, the very similar example, also with the character yu, from the collection of Stephen Junkunc, IV, sold in our Hong Kong salesroom, October 24/25, 1993, lot 718

Another very similar example in the A. Brankston Collection was illustrated by Soame Jenyns, Ming Pottery and Porcelain, London, 1953, pl. 3c (iii) and two other simialr examples from the Collection of Mrs. Otto Harriman and the collection of Lord Cunliffe were included in the O.C.S. exhibition, Chinese Blue and White Porcelain, 14th to 19th Centuries, London, December 1953 - January 1954, Catalogue, nos. 11 and 12

Of the similar stemcups published only one other is noted as having the character yu, "precious", included in the slip decoration on the interior. See John Ayers, Far Eastern Ceramics in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 1980, no. 136

Based on the excavation in 1970 of the early Ming tomb of Wang Xingzu (1338-1371), outside the Zhonghuamen, Nanjing, dated to the 4th year of Hongwu 1371, it is now thought that these stemcups, previously dated to the Yuan period, could be dated anywhere from late Yuan to early Ming. Jan Fontein and Tung Wu in Unearthing China's Past, Boston, 1973, illustrate a stemcup found in this excavation, fig. 114, p. 203, which stylistically is very close to the present example