A Ming-style copper-red 'three fish' stem bowl, Mark and period of Yongzheng | 清雍正 釉裏紅三魚紋高足盌 《大清雍正年製》款

Orientique, Hong Kong, 13th January 2010.

吉慶堂，香港，2010年1月13日

Designs created through red-glaze silhouettes originated in the early Ming dynasty and are best known from the Xuande (1426-35) period, but the technique had already been developed during the Yongle reign (1403-24), when silhouettes of animals and fish were used in combination with underglaze-blue designs; see an example excavated from the late Yongle stratum of the Ming imperial kiln site, illustrated in Imperial Porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande Periods Excavated from the Site of the Ming Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1989, cat. no. 38.

Compare several published Yongzheng period examples, including one illustrated in John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics, The Koger Collection, London, 1985, pl. 97; and another from the T.Y. Chao Collection, included in the exhibition Ming and Ch’ing Porcelain from the Collection of the T.Y. Chao Family Foundation, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1978, cat. no. 75, sold in our London rooms, 8th July 1974, lot 280 and then again in our Hong Kong rooms, 19th May 1987, lot 264. Compare also a closely related example, previously in the Meiyintang Collection, sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 8th April 2013, lot 36.