Adam's Asian Art - Fine Oriental Ceramics, Sculptures & Art November 3rd 2018

44 Saturday 3 rd November 2018 74 A CAMELLIA-LEAF GREEN CHRYSANTHEMUM DISH, MARK OF YONGZHENG (1723-1735) the dish comprising forty-four flutes, each with pointed tips radiating from a slightly recessed centre, glazed all over in a camellia-leaf green save for the footring and a six-charac- ter reign mark inscribed on the base in blue and reserved in white within a double circle, 17.8cm diameter, foot ring 11.3cm diameter, 3.8cm high from foot to petal tip € 40,000 - 6,000 The Petals of Longevity The Chinese were fascinated by the chrysanthemum flower and had drawn inspiration from its ability to resist the chills of winter. They referred to it as the flower of longevity. Emperors drank chrysanthemum-steeped wines, emulating a tradition that the Immortals did likewise. If the inhabitants of some village or other showed a tendency to long life, the word went around that it must be because their water source was bordered with chrysanthemums. On the ninth day of the ninth month of the year, the beginning of autumn, Chinese literati wrote poems in praise of the chrysanthemum, see- ing its resilience as a symbol of the resilience to which they themselves must aspire. Hence the chrysanthemum flower figured forth a network of values, and unsurprisingly, came to feature prominently in Chinese art. The Yongzheng Emperor (reigning from 1723 to 1735) shared the general esteem for this flower. Records reveal that in 1733, he ordered his superintendent of the imperial kilns in Jingdezhen to create twelve dishes of chrysanthemum shape each in a different colour. Forty dishes of each colour type were to be made. Today, the Palace Museum in Beijing uniquely possesses a full set, the Beijing ‘Twelve’, as they are sometimes referred to. The dish offered here as lot 74 came from the Carlow Collection, a collection assembled in Philadelphia during the 1940s by two sisters who later returned with it to Ireland. Items from this collection first started appearing on the open market in 2010. The collection was diverse, but all of it had merit, and amongst it were several imperial porcelains which were subsequently re-auctioned; for example, Bonhams, London, 11 November 2010, lot 312; Sotheby’s, London, 15 May 2013, lot 226. Dishes in the camellia-leaf green colour have rarely come up for sale; a very similar dish in Geneva, the Baur Collection (accession number A496), its petal tips a little less pointed, is published by John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, 2 vols (Geneva, 1999), II, 223. It might be noted that the dimensions of the Beijing ‘Twelve’ and the present lot are identical: general diameter, 17.8 cm; footring diameter, 11.3 cm; and height, 3.8 cm. Prof. Alan. J Fletcher, MRIA