Vardera med två dropplattor och överst en skål för ljushållare. Dekor i en klar underglasyrblå färg av en lotusslinga samt på kanten vågformationer och blommor. Den övre dropplattan med ett poem samt med Qianlongs sigillmärke. Höjd ca 15 cm.
Limmade.
Provenance: donated to a charity organisation by a Swedish private estate.
Compare also with candle sticks in the Palace Museum Taipei, Object Number故瓷008896N000000000.
Compare also with a candlestick of the same model but different decoration in the Museum of Asian Art, San Fransisco. Object number; B69P169L.a. Credit Line; Gift of Roy Leventritt.
For a single one without the poem, see Sothebys, lot no 105, Chinese Art
Auction. 19 March 2024. New York.
Compare also with a larger one sold at Christies, lot no 1280, The Imperial Sale, Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, Tuesday May 30 2026.
For the story of the Qianlong candle sticks, see Zhang Faying, Tang Ying du tao wendang [Archive on Tang Ying’s Supervision of the Imperial Kilns], Beijing, 2012, p. 162.
The Qianlong Emperor commissioned Tang Ying to reading lamps, according to a court record, in the second month of the ninth year of the Qianlong period (1744), the Emperor instructed two eunuchs to send to Tang Ying a blue and white inscribed ‘reading lamp’ as a model, together with a poem written by the Emperor, in order to fire a few reading lamps in underglaze blue or ‘foreign colours’ (famille-rose), both in larger and smaller sizes, the calligraphy of the sample lamp to be replaced by his own poem, or, for candlesticks intended as altar pieces, the poem to be omitted.
Catalog of the Special Exhibition of K'ang-Hsi, Yung-Cheng and Ch'ien-Lung Porcelain Ware from the Ch'ing Dynasty in the National Palace Museum, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1986, cat. no. 141.
Each with a mix of two poems, one is “farewell to a monk” by Xue Anfu (Yuan Dynasty) and the other “encountering a Daoist” by Shi Wujian (Tang Dynasty).
《送僧》—— 薛昂夫〔元代〕
曇花貝葉春三月,布襪青鞋山萬重。
禪性若灰終有味,機鋒掣電本來空。
《遇醉道士》—— 施肩吾〔唐代〕
霞帔尋常帶酒眠,路傍疑是酒中仙。
醉來不住人家宿,多向遠山松月邊。