Home
Porcelain & Works of Art
The Centenary Exhibition
Doucai
Imperial

15 – M4928

Chinese imperial porcelain doucai deep saucer dish, pan, painted in the centre with two branches of tree peony bearing large yellow, iron-red and aubergine blooms, amongst lime and apple-green leaves, issuing from pierced taihu rockwork, between sprays of bamboo and beneath two butterflies in flight and within two underglaze blue borders, with a further underglaze blue line beneath the rim. The exterior painted with large branches of chrysanthemum and hibiscus amongst rockwork and smaller sprays of aster, pink and bamboo, with two butterflies in flight above two underglaze blue lines and beneath a further line at the rim.

The base with a six-character mark of Yongzheng within a double ring in underglaze blue and of the period, 1723-1735.

8 ¼ inches, 21 cm diameter.

From the collection of Hans Öström, Stockholm (1865-1949). With label, collection 2459.
From the collection of Ester (d.1955) and Erik Holmberg (1888-1972). Collection no. K 64.
The pair to this dish, from the same collections, was sold by Sotheby’s Hong Kong in their auction of Marchant – Fifty Qing Imperial Porcelains, 10th July 2020, lot 3103.
A similar pair sold by Frank Caro, successor to C. Loo, New York, exhibited at the San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas, 1984-2017, was sold by Christie’s Hong Kong in their auction of Important Chinese Ceramics from the Dr. James D. Thornton Collection, 29th November 2017, lot 2809, pp. 50-55; another pair is illustrated by Thomas Fok in Encompassing Precious Beauty, The Songzhutang Collection of Imperial Chinese Ceramics, Hong Kong, 2016, no. 36, pp. 100/1.
Another, from the collection of and Mrs. Soame Jenyns is illustrated by Harry M. Garner in The Art of the Ch’ing Dynasty, The Oriental Ceramic Society, London, 1963, no. 113, p. 57, pl. 45, and is included by Soame Jenyns in Later Chinese Porcelain, London, 1971, pl. LXI, figs. 1 and 2; another from the J. F. Woodthorpe Collection was included by the Oriental Ceramic Society in their 1951 exhibition of Enamelled Polychrome Porcelain of the Manchu Dynasty, no. 99.
The butterfly, hudie, is an auspicious subject associated with joy and weddings, and is a pun on the age seventy to eighty, and therefore a symbol of When flying amongst flowers, this becomes an auspicious design symbolising happiness, love and good fortune, dielianhua. When particularly featured with peony, fuguihua, it forms the rebus “may you have an accumulation of blessings, wealth and high social status”, fudie fugui.