A fine celadon-glazed octagonal vase, hu mark and period of Qianlong

superbly potted of canted rectangular section, the pear-shaped body supported by a splayed foot, rising gently to a slightly waisted neck flanked by a pair of tubular handles, covered overall with an even pale green glaze, the base with the six-character seal-mark in underglaze-blue

It is rare to find vases of this form in this unusually large size although a guan-type vase of similar shape and size, also with a Qianlong reign mark and of the period, from the Garner collection and now in the British Museum, London, is illustrated in Soame Jenyns, Later Chinese Porcelain, London, 1951, pl. LXIV, fig. 2. For a related example offered at auction see a vase sold in our New York rooms, 29th November 1988, lot 209, and again at Christie's New York, 24th March 2004, lot 241.

Compare a smaller related hu-form vase in Taipei, published in the Illustrated Catalogue of Ch'ing Dynasty Porcelain in the National Palace Museum: Ch'ien-lung Ware and Other Wares, Tokyo, 1981, pl. 82; another from the collection of the Art Gallery, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, included in the exhibition Qing Imperial Porcelain of the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong Reigns, Hong Kong, 1995, cat.no. 63; and two other vases, one with a crakled, the other with a plain guan-type glaze, published in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. II, London, 1994, pls. 874 and 875.

For the prototype of this vase, originally inspired by the archaic bronze hu, compare a Longquan celadon vase included in the Illustrated Catalogue of Sung Dynasty Porcelain in the National Palace Museum. Lung-ch'uan Ware, Ko Ware and Other Wares, Taipei, 1974, pl. 1.