A CHINESE BLUE AND WHITE BOTTLE VASE

A CHINESE BLUE AND WHITE BOTTLE VASE
TRANSITIONAL PERIOD C.1640

The globular body decorated with a figural scene depicting an official with his five attendants receiving a gift from a eunuch with a further two attendants, all raised on a short straight foot, 35.2cm.

Provenance: from an English private collection, London, acquired before 1940.

Cf. Seventeenth-Century Chinese Porcelain from the Butler Family Collection, p.79, no.38 for a similar bottle vase. See also the British Museum, accession no. Franks.1676 for a pair of similar vases.

In Chinese porcelain this shape appears exclusively in high transitional wares, deriving directly from a sixteenth-century Iznik pottery form. This shape was particularly popular in Holland, and it has been suggested that bottle vases of the type offered here, painted with figural scenes and stylised tulips, were either responding to or made directly for the Dutch market. Tulips were introduced to Holland during the mid-sixteenth century. From 1634 to 1637 speculative prices for tulip bulbs in Holland ran so high that rare varieties could fetch a fortune in florins, leading to so-called 'tulip mania'. At about this time the tulip began to appear as a decorative motif on both Delft and Chinese porcelains, demonstrated by the example offered here.

明末清初 青花人物故事圖瓶
來源: 英國私人收藏，購於1940年前。