A wucai 'month' cup, Mark and period of Kangxi | 清康熙 五彩桃花花神杯 《大清康熙年製》款

Collection of Carl Gustav Kjellin (1910-1990), acquired in Shanghai in the 1940s.

Carl Gustav Kjellin （1910至1990年）收藏，於上世紀40年代得自上海

Month cups depicting seasonal flowers accompanied by pertinent two-line poems represent a classic design of the Kangxi period (r. 1662-1722). Very delicately potted, they are painted in the proper wucai palette of underglaze blue and overglaze enamels, which was devised in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), but rarely used in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), when the underglaze colour was generally omitted. On these month cups the designs are generally sketched on the unglazed porcelain in a faint underglaze blue.

The poem on the present cup may be translated as follows: 

'The swallow returns when the blossoms sway in the breeze,

It is the season in late spring when farmers return to their fields.'

Compare a similar cup from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. E. Toeg, included in the Oriental Ceramic Society exhibition Enamelled Polychrome Porcelain of the Manchu Dynasty (1644-1912), London, 1951, cat. no. 253, and sold twice in these rooms, 3rd December 1963, lot 147, and 14th July 1970, lot 204; another example, from the YC Chen collection, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 29th May 2013, lot 1911.