A fine lavender-glazed bowl, Mark and period of Yongzheng | 清雍正 天青釉盌 《大清雍正年製》款

S. Marchant & Son, London.

馬錢特，倫敦

This high-fired lavender-blue glaze, with a cobalt content of about 1%, was first produced by the imperial kilns in Jingdezhen during the Kangxi Emperor’s reign, and remained popular throughout the Qing dynasty. Known in the West by the 19th-century French connoisseurs’ term clair-de-lune (moon light), and in China as tianlan (sky blue), it was one of the most successful monochrome glazes created in Jingdezhen during the Kangxi reign, its soft hue reserved exclusively for imperial porcelains.

A similar pair of bowls in the Tianminlou Collection is illustrated in Chinese Porcelain in the S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1987, cat. no. 148. Another comparable bowl, from the collection of H.R.N. Norton, was sold twice in our London rooms, 5th November 1963, lot 197, and 7th November 2012, lot 273. A related pair sold in our New York rooms, 27th November 1941, lot 561, formerly in the collection of Stephen Junkunk III, is included in Exhibition of Imperial Porcelain of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, Marchant Ltd, London, 1996, cat. no. 12; one bowl of that pair was sold again in our London rooms, 14th May 2014, lot 29. See also a larger lavender-glazed bowl (15.8 cm) preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, illustrated in Rose Kerr, Chinese Ceramics, Porcelain of the Qing Dynasty 1644-1911, London, 1986 (rev. ed. 1998), no. 20 left.