R1050

A Chinese porcelain blue and white ewer in the form of a frog, the body moulded and the skin stippled on a blue washed ground with prunus flower-heads, the head of the frog with bulbous eyes and cylindrical mouth forming the spout, the back with an open aperture and gently flaring rim, between the upright loop handle
decorated with flower heads and leaves, the flat base unglazed.

6 3⁄4 inches, 17.2 cm high; 6 1⁄4 inches, 15.9 cm long.
Wanli, 1573-1619.

Condition: excellent.

Sold by Dinastia, rua da Escola Politécnica, 183, Lisbon (with label).
Formerly in the Morpurgo family collection, Amsterdam.
Sold by Sotheby’s London in their online auction of Chinese Works of Art from the Morpurgo Collection, 8th November 2018, lot no. 10, purchase price by Marchant GBP British Pounds 49,400.
A similar model and the only other one recorded together with its handle (handle crack) was exhibited at the Hong Kong Oriental Ceramic Society exhibition of Southeast Asian and Chinese Trade Pottery, 1979, catalogue no. 118; then sold by Sotheby’s London in their auction of Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, 11th December 1979, lot no. 276, pp. 176/7, where it was purchased by the Idemitsu Museum of Art, and is published in their book of Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Museum Collection, Tokyo, Japan, no. 829.
Another with the handle missing replaced with metalwork was sold by Christie’s London in their auction of The Peony Pavilion Collection, 12th June 1989, lot no. 396, pp. 116/7.

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