A RARE DOUCAI 'BIRTHDAY' DISH, KANGXI MARK AND PERIOD

Vibrantly painted in the doucai palette, the motifs adorning this dish brim with auspicious meaning indicating it was clearly intended as a birthday gift. During his six-decade-long reign, the Kangxi Emperor had refrained from organizing large birthday celebrations, except on the occasion of his 60th birthday in 1713, and in anticipation of his 70th birthday in 1723. The former was a truly grand national event which lasted weeks and involved numerous processions, performances and banquets, and the latter would have been similarly magnificent had the Emperor not died unexpectedly a few months before. Porcelain wares were produced specifically for these two occasions, and the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen began firing these wares years in advance. Peter Y.K. Lam has recently attempted to identify porcelain produced for these two events and has suggested that dishes of the present type were intended as gifts for the Emperor’s 70th birthday (Peter Y.K. Lam in “Myriad Longevity Without Boundaries. Some Qing Imperial Birthday Ceramics from Hong Kong Collections”, Arts of Asia, October 2010, vol. 40, no. 5, pp 110-111). Lam notes the elongated and slightly rigid style in which the reign mark on these dishes is written and its similarity to Yongzheng period reign marks; thus suggesting that it represents a stylistic transition between the two reigns.

Two closely related dishes from the Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, are illustrated in ibid., pls 4 and 5; a dish from the Grandidier Collection, in the Musée Guimet, Paris, is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics. The World’s Great Collections, vol. 7, Tokyo, 1981, col. pl. 86; another was sold twice in our Hong Kong rooms, 16th May 1989, lot 290, and 30th October 2000, lot 154; and a fifth example was sold in our Paris rooms, 13th June, 2012, lot 174, and again at Christie’s Hong Kong, 4th October 2016, lot 164.

本品鬥彩顏色鮮豔，紋飾寓意吉祥，明顯乃壽辰賀禮。康熙皇帝在位長達六十載，壽宴並不鋪張，唯1713年六十大壽以及1723年準備七十大壽例外。前者舉國歡慶，盛宴連連，後者計劃亦同樣盛大，惜皇帝七十壽辰之前突然駕崩。為賀康熙帝六十及七十大壽，景德鎮大量制瓷，早於數年之前便開始燒制。林業強近年開始嘗試辨認康熙六十及七十大壽特製瓷器，並認為如本品之盤乃為康熙七十壽辰而製（林業強，〈Myriad Longevity Without Boundaries. Some Qing Imperial Birthday Ceramics from Hong Kong Collections〉，《Arts of Asia》，2010年10月，卷40，編號5，頁 110-111）。林氏指出此類盤年款修長而風格偏向生硬，與後來雍正年款相近，故此推測前者乃康雍兩朝之間過渡風格。

比較兩例，出自香港徐氏博物館，出處同上，圖版4及5；另一例出自Grandidier收藏，現存於巴黎吉美博物館，圖載於《Oriental Ceramics. The World's Great Collections》，卷7，東京，1981年，彩圖版86。另一例售於香港蘇富比1989年5月16日，編號290，以及2000年10月30日，編號154；例五售於巴黎蘇富比2012年6月13日，編號174，後易手於香港佳士得2016年10月4日，編號164。