Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

A LARGE AND IMPOSING CHINESE BLUE AND WHITE ‘BAJIXIANG’ MOONFLASK, BIANHU
SIX CHARACTER QIANLONG MARK AND OF THE PERIOD 1736-95

Finely painted on both sides in underglaze blue with eight lotus petal-shaped panels, each enclosing one of the Eight Buddhist Emblems which radiate from central raised bosses. The narrow sides are decorated with bands of stylised lotus scrolls. The neck is flanked by a pair of scroll handles and painted with lingzhi scrolls and with a key-fret band to the rim, which is similarly repeated on the foot, 50cm.

Provenance: formerly in the collection of Ted and Gladys Roberts, and according to the family records, the present vase is one of a pair inherited in 1947.

These large Qianlong flasks are based on fifteenth century prototypes, which had a single convex side that was decorated and a flat unglazed back with a countersunk medallion in the centre. An early Ming dynasty Yongle example in the Freer Gallery of Art, is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World’s Great Collections, Tokyo, vol. 9, no.94. These fifteenth century blue and white flasks were themselves based on silver-inlaid brass prototypes.

See also Good Fortune, Long Life, Health and Peace, A Special Exhibition of Porcelain with Auspicious Designs, Taipei, 1995, no.11 for an example in the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Another in the Nanjing Museum is illustrated in Qing Imperial Porcelain of the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong Reigns, p.295.

清乾隆 青花佛教八吉祥抱月瓶
《大清乾隆年製》青花篆書款
來源：泰特及格拉迪斯·羅伯特伉儷舊藏，據家族史料記載這尊抱月瓶原為一對，由泰特·羅伯特於1947年從祖母處繼承。