Adam's FINE ASIAN ART Part I 28th & Part II 29th June 2022

356 A PAIR OF BLEU DE HUE ‘MANDARIN DUCKS AND LOTUS POND’ PORCELAIN LIDDED POTS POSSIBLY VIETNAM AND LATE NGUYEN DYNASTY Finely painted in underglaze cobalt blue with Mandarin ducks frolicking on a lotus pond. H: 20 cm € 800 - 1,500 357 A PAIR OF BLUE AND WHITE ‘DAOIST IMMORTALS’ PORCE- LAIN DISH WARMERS WITH A SEAL MARK POSSIBLY VIETNAM, LATE NGUYEN DYNASTY, LATE 19TH CENTURY It has a spread foot surmounted by a baluster body topped by a cup. The body is openworked with two quatrefoil holes. It is finely paint- ed with landscapes, pavilions and Daoist immortals. One rim has a metal mount. Both pieces bear an identical cobalt blue four-character mark in archaistic seal script. H: 13,5 cm € 1,500 - 3,000 358 A LARGE BLEU DE HUE TYPE ‘KUI DRAGON’ PORCELAIN TRUMPET-SHAPE VASE, YENYEN VIETNAM, 20TH CENTURY Adorned in cobalt blue with kui dragons, dragons faces, stylised cicadas and possibly peaches or pomegranates. On the neck, two repeated ideograms: ‘ 王壬 ’ (v ươ ng nhâm). Sold together with a matching lacquered wooden stand by the studio of Thanh Lê. H (stand excluded): 43,5 cm € 800 - 1,500 Notes: 1. Following the tradition, our lime-paste pot is naturalistically shaped as a betel-quid. Indeed, the globular body is shaped after the rocks from which the lime is extracted. The handle is shaped as an Areca tree trunk with vertical streaks. The curvy handle’s ends are shaped as areca nuts. On another note, conjoined dragon and phoenix represent the union of a man and a woman. 2. In Vietnam, betel chewing is an age-old custom. Numerous are the tools used to prepare it, amidst which the lime-paste pots, ours being a good example, but also wooden betel box (tráp tr ầ u), betel trays (c ơ i tr ầ u) and areca knives. Lime-paste pots would all have been created by talented potters, each piece being a unique one, and each piece involving a process of creativity and originality. Most of them would have been enamelled and with no mark. There would have been one in each single house for a domestic use. 3. According to scholar Nguyên Xuân Hiên: ‘The Vietnamese consider lime pots as a representative of God […] People did not say, ‘I go to buy’ but to ‘invite a Mister Lime Pot’. The vulgar term mua (to buy) was replaced by the respectful term th ỉ nh (to invite). People, who wanted to invite a lime pot, had to prepare in advance a square of new, red cloth. On an auspicious day, they put this cloth in a clean basket and brought it on their head to the market […] Then the owners covered the ‘Invited Pot’ with the cloth and brought it back on their head. It was forbidden to carry a lime pot by its handle’ (cf. Nguyên Xuân Hiên entitled ‘Betel-Chewing in Vietnam, Its Past and Current Importance’). € 6,000 - 8,000 359 A MASSIVE, ENAMELLED AND RELIEF DECO- RATED CERAMIC ‘R Ồ NG AND PH ƯỢ NG HOÀNG – DRAGON AND PHOENIX’ LIME-PASTE POT VIETNAM, QU Ả NG Đ Ứ C KILNS, 19TH CENTURY OR EARLIER Resting on a spreading foot, with a globular body surmounted by a bow-shaped handled, the front part with a hole. The body is enamelled notably in red and blue. It is further adorned with an applied relief decoration depicting a dragon on the front, a phoenix on the back, pine trees on the sides, right below the ends of the handles, and bound scrolls on both sides of the handle. H: 24 cm