An exquisite, rare, and important Chinese Daoguang imperial Gu form vase. It has a graceful surface contour with a large trumpet mouth, a stout lower part, and a slightly smaller trumpet-shaped base to provide stability. Its body is made of white and very fine clay. The most outstanding features are its exquisite dark green glaze, being thick, very even, unctuous, and having a waxy surface texture, and its very delicately incised decoration. Starting early Qianlong about 80 years earlier, polychrome porcelain, especially the famille rose (fen cai) type, dominates the imperial porcelain production. Thereafter, year after year, fewer and fewer and poorer and poorer quality monochrome porcelain was produce. This vase is an important exception, having a quality not only comparable to Kangxi’s sky blue (clair de lune) and Lan Yiao Hong (ox blood), and Yongzheng’s carmine red (yien zhee hong), but perhaps surpassing them, in that its dark green glaze mimics the thick waxy green of camellia leave and the surface of dark green He Tien jade, from Xingjian province. This naturalistic feature reflects Daoguang Emperor’s taste for simplicity and naturalism. However, its intricate, delicate, and magnificent incised patter reflects the imperial elegance and excess. The incised pattern was called “Jing Sun Tien Hua” (adding flower pattern onto well decorated silk) by Qianlong court, or “ja dao” by late Qing porcelain workers. Ja dao is an elaborated process of using a fine needle to carve out lines on the glaze of a porcelain ware before firing. This art started late Yongzheng and became an essential part of the most elegant Qianlong imperial wares, and continued until early Republic. Since this is a very expensive process and requires experienced artists, ja dao became ever coarse and less decorative as time passes. At Qianlong time each of the curled, fern bud-like element of ja dao is compact with finer lines, usually with a diameter of 1 cm or less; by late Qing the typical diameter is about 1.5 cm or larger, with coarse lines. The element of ja dao on this vase is about 1 cm, still preserving the elegance of Qianlong. The shape of Gu started about 3500 years ago as bronze Gu. During early and mid Qing, many variations of Gu were made (see, e.g., Gen Boa Chan’s “Identification of Ming and Qing Porcelain”, new edition, p. 269 figure 458. ISBN 962-321-012-5). Most of them have either too large trumpet mouth and too small base, rendering them very unstable and unsightly, or stump-like bases, lacking a graceful surface contour. This Gu indeed has both the most beautiful shape and is stable. The upper surface of the mouth and the interior are painted with a turquoise glaze with decreasing intensity toward the bottom. This green interior is a tradition of Qianlong, when the best wares were applied with such glaze internally and with decreasing intensity toward the bottom, with the outer base also applied the glaze in full strength. These wares are some of the best imperial wares of Qianlong (called lu li lu di, green inside and at outer base), though commonly imitated in late Qing-early Republic. The iron red-glaze mark at the center of the outer base is “Shen De Tang Zhi” (made by/for the Hall of Meticulous Morals”), instead of the more common traditional imperial mark. The Hall of Meticulous Morals was the residence of prince Daoguang; after ascending to the throne, he dictated that the best porcelain made for the imperial court continued to use this hall mark. Wares carrying this mark are usually of famille rose type; this one is an exceptions. The most unique feature of this mark is that the tip of the brush touches the glaze surface in an angle so that the beginning of a stroke is often slanting, not horizontal. Another feature is that it is usually in good red color. Both features are shown on this vase, though the strokes are slightly thinner than common Shen De Tang Zhi mark. H: 21.4 cm (9.5”).