R1381
Description
Chinese porcelain cylindrical brushpot with grooved upper edge painted on slightly raised white slip in underglaze blue and copper-red with five images of Kui Xing in different poses holding pen and bushell measure, a book or prunus spray at his feet, on a celadon ground, the glazed base rim and central circular recess separated by a wide biscuit rim.
16.3 cm high
Kangxi, circa 1690.
Provenance & Additional Information
- • Purchased by Marchant from Joseph Chan Fine Arts Co. Ltd, Hong Kong, 4th November, 1996, stock no. S8841.
• Published by Marchant, Seventeenth-Century Blue and White and Copper-Red and Their Predecessors, 1997, no. 55, p.58.
• Sold to Alan Wheatley, The Wheatley Collection, 20th May 1997.
• Purchased by Marchant, 1st June 1999, stock no. S9248.
• Sold to S. Marsh, 2nd June 1999.
• Formerly in the Marsh Collection.
• Published by S.Marsh, Brushpots: A Collector’s View, 2020, pp.190-191.
• Sold by Bonhams London, The Marsh Collection: Art for the Literati, 3 November 2022, lot no. 34. - Included by Stuart Marchant in Marchant – One Hundred Years Vol.I (1925-2000), 2025, image no.856, p.460.
- • Kui Xing is an acolyte of Wen Chang, the god of literature, who lives in the constellation Ursa Major (Gui in Chinese). As here, he is normally depicted as ugly, standing on one leg with a bushell measure and pen in his hands. Often he stands on a carp that changes into a dragon on ascending the Longman falls. This transformation symbolises literary success.
• Kui Xing 魁星, the ‘Chief Star’, is a Daoist deity closely associated with scholarly attainment and success in the civil service examinations. A brushpot decorated with this powerful figure would have been considered highly auspicious, serving both as an object of contemplation and a source of inspiration for the scholar at his desk.
• The recessed centre of the base of many Kangxi brushpots suggest the possibility that they were inspired by wooden ones.
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