Notes

LOT ESSAY This lavishly decorated jar embodies the Qianlong Emperor’s admiration for Ming-dynasty fahua porcelains. The fahua technique employs raised lines to provide outlines and color divisions on ceramics decorated with colored glazes. The technique was often combined with either a cobalt blue or a turquoise ground. In the eighteenth century, the raised designs become very delicate and precise. On the present jar, the decorative beaded bands and lower border of crashing waves create a broad expanse for the tranquil scene of white egrets in a lotus pond, all set against a rich mottled blue ground. A virtually identical jar with a cover is in the Matsuoko Museum of Art, Tokyo. (Fig. 1) A Qianlong mark-and-period fahua-style covered jar of different shape, but with very similar decoration, is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and illustrated in Catalog of the Special Exhibition of K’ang-hsi, Yung-cheng and Ch’ien-lung Porcelain from the Ch’ing Dynasty in the National Palace Musuem, Taipei, 1986, no. 81. See, also, the Qianlong mark-and-period fahua-style covered jar from the Wang Xing Lou Collection with a virtually identical lotus pond scene, but rendered in turquoise and famille rose enamels with gilt highlights against a sapphire-blue ground, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 May 2022, lot 2722. (Fig. 2)