A fine and exquisite famille-rose floral medallion bottle vase enamelled in the palace workshops. Mark and period of Qianlong

A fine and exquisite famille-rose floral medallion bottle vase enamelled in the palace workshops. Blue enamel mark and period of Qianlong. photo courtesy Sotheby's

superbly potted, the slightly compressed spherical body sweeping up to a tall slender neck with a cupped mouth, in a tour-de-force of painting the fine white body covered in a clear glaze and decorated with four round white medallions each containing finely enamelled flowers, one with yellow day lilies growing beside pink and red poppies with small blue daisies on the side, the second with pink and red roses blooming from a bush with bamboo and asters, the third with a nandina bush laden with ripe red berries arching over a stand of narcissus with lingzhi fungus to the side, the final medallion with rich yellow hollyhock growing beside red and yellowish green leafy stems, all reserved on the blue ground decorated with pink and yellow bats swooping amidst multi-coloured clouds, between a border of lappets picked out in rose-pink enclosed by a narrow yellow border and two shades of green radiating from the foot and a puce-ground border painted with archaistic green and pink dragons on the shoulder, the raised collar picked out in orange, the splayed foot encircled by a pale blue ground border painted with a feathery pink scroll above a thin yellow line, all below a tall neck decorated with stylised multi-coloured flowers borne on scrolling leafy stems against a rich yellow ground, all between two borders of ruyi heads, one predominantly blue and the other pink, the cupped mouth with a border of small petals on the underside, the base inscribed with a blue enamel mark Qianlong nianzhi within a double square, the mate offered in the proceeding lot; 18.4 cm., 7 1/4 in. Estimate 60,000,000—80,000,000 HKD. Lot Sold 140,660,000 HKD

PROVENANCE: Collection of Alfred E. Hippisley, Commissioner of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service of China at Shanghai and Peking from 1876 to 1884 (one of a pair, together with the following lot).
Anderson Galleries, New York, 31^st January 1925, lot 265 (one of a pair, together with the following lot).
Collection of J.T. Tai (one of a pair, together with the following lot).

EXHIBITED: The U.S. National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., on loan from 1887 to 1912 (together with the following lot).

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Alfred E. Hippisley, A Sketch of the History of Ceramic Art in China, with a Catalogue of the Hippisley Collection of Chinese Porcelains, Washington, D.C., 1902, pl. 21; reprinted from the Report of the United States National Museum, Washington, 1900, pp. 305-416 (together with the following lot).
The Hippisley Collection of Chinese Porcelain Formed by Alfred E. Hippisley, The Anderson Galleries, New York, 1925, lot 265 (together with the following lot).

Sotheby's. Masterpieces of Qing Imperial Porcelain from J.T. Tai & Co. 07 Oct 10. Hong Kong. www.sothebys.com