The elegantly potted bowl with deep rounded sides supported on a short straight foot, the exterior and interior all covered under an attractive lemon-yellow glaze. Diameter 12cm.
Purchased from Bonhams, lot 68, Fine Chinese Art. 12 May 2016. Live Auction, London, New Bond Street.
Both the shape and glaze of the vase reflect the emperor’s antiquarian taste. Potters modelled the form of the vase on an ancient bronze drinking vessel called a gu. Wealthy aristocrats and generals of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, (about 1600–256 BC), buried bronze vessels as part of ritual eating and drinking equipment for tombs.
Medley 1973 / Illustrated Catalogue of Ming and Ch'ing Monochrome in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art (p.44, no.B500). There are bowls of this type inte the collection of Percival David, British Museum, see for example. Museum number PDF,B.500.
This bowl demonstrates an attractive use of a monochrome yellow glaze at Jingdezhen. This colour glaze was used to decorate court porcelain for some five hundred years of the imperial era in China from AD 1403 to AD 1911. Potters fired the cup twice, first at a porcelain temperature of around 1280-1320 °C and then in a second, lower-temperature firing to vitrify the lead-fluxed, iron-pigmented glaze.