A RARE CHINESE BLUE AND WHITE CYLINDRICAL MING-STYLE ‘POMEGRANATES’ VASE

A RARE CHINESE BLUE AND WHITE CYLINDRICAL MING-STYLE ‘POMEGRANATES’ VASE
SIX CHARACTER YONGZHENG MARK AND OF THE PERIOD 1723-35

The tall body supported on a low foot and delicately painted in underglaze cobalt blue with eight stylised pomegranates growing from leafy stems issuing from stylised scrolls which form vases. The decoration arranged in two tiers, the four fruit of the upper register divided by ribbon-tied lozenges, the shoulder with pendent scrolls with ruyi motifs and with florets to the neck and a band of scrolls above the foot, all painted to simulate ‘heaping and piling’, 25cm.

Provenance: Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum (1850-1916), and thence by descent through the family. This appears to be the vase recorded in the Hall at Broome Park, in the Christie, Manson & Woods inventory of December 1916 on page 42, no.466; the inventory describes the decoration as ‘formal asters’ rather than pomegranates.

Cf. The Exhibition of Ming and Ch’ing Porcelain from the Collection of the T Y Chao Family Foundation, cat. no.84, for a closely related vase. See also Christie’s, London, 6th November 2012, lot 278 and also Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 10th April 2006, lot 1677, for two closely related vases but painted with flowers.

This rare vase is an 18th-century reinterpretation of an early Ming design that was commonly employed on vases of all forms. The Yongzheng Emperor was fascinated with history and the design incorporates the deliberately painted ‘heaping and piling’ characteristic of Yongle and Xuande underglaze-blue porcelains.

清雍正 青花多子多福瓶
《大清雍正年製》青花楷書款
來源：霍雷肖•赫伯特•基奇納元帥（1850-1916），之後由其後人繼承。據佳士得Manson & Woods出版的， Broome Park庫存手冊中記載，1916年12月，頁42， 編號466。