Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

A Chinese porcelain Dutch-decorated bottle vase early 18th century, the vase with an applied blue-glazed dragon crawling around the neck of the vase, later-enamelled in the Kakiemon manner with a long-tailed bird perched on flowering branches issuing from banded hedges and rockwork, with flying insects about further scattered flowers in iron red, the neck with two panels containing insects reserved on a hatched ground and painted with suspended tassels, 21cm.

Provenance: the Helen Espir Collection, no. 768. Purchased from P & A Butt, January 2000.

Cf. European Decoration on Oriental Porcelain, p.91, pl.24 for two similar vases in the Ashmolean Museum. Four bottles similar to this, but with Dutch-decoration of Japanese figures, were in the collection of Augustus the Strong.