M5874
£24,500
Description
A Chinese porcelain blue and white slender beaker vase of archaic gu form, painted with the Eight Immortals, each standing and holding their attributes, in fenced garden scenes amongst rockwork and plants, each within a lozenge diaper and on a dense wan-character inspired ground, all between triangular bands and two ribs, with a gently splayed foot and flared rim.
The base with an artemisia leaf mark.
Kangxi, 1662-1722
17 5/8 inches, 44.8 cm high.
Condition
Overall excellent condition without any chips, cracks or restoration, with expected very minor original natural firing spots and wear consistent with age.
Provenance & Additional Information
- Sold by Sotheby’s London in their auction of Fine Chinese Export Porcelain, 18th November 1980, lot 11, purchased by Heirloom and Howard.
- From the Collection of David H. Murdock.
- Sold by Sotheby’s New York in their auction of Chinese Art, 25 March 2026, lot 191.
- A yenyen vase of this identical pattern in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (III), The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Volume 36, no. 27, p. 33, and again by Chen Run Min (ed.) in Gu Gong Museum Collection of Qing Dynasty Porcelain, 2005, no. 309, pp. 478/9; a pair of yenyen, phoenix-tail, vases of this pattern from a private English collection were included by Marchant in their Recent Acquisitions catalogue, 2010, no. 31, pp. 54/5.
- It is interesting to note that often this group of ‘Eight Immortal’ vases are of a particularly luminous blue.
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