A FINELY ENAMELLED FALANGCAI ‘POPPY’ VASE OF MINIATURE SIZE, WITH AN ‘IMPERIAL CURIO’ MARK, YUWAN, CHINA, 18TH CENTURY
Superbly painted with the most exquisite opaque enamels, the poppies are shown in the various stages of the flower cycle: budding, blooming, and wilting, all rendered in subtly graduated shades of rose, blue, and lavender, borne on undulating stems with precisely painted microscopic hair, issuing finely veined leaves in various shades of lime and fern green, each bloom vibrantly detailed with subtle veining and lemon-yellow speckled stamens, the buds and petals in palpable light relief.


Inscriptions:
The reverse inscribed with a poem in elegant calligraphy, ‘When they bloom, they are a brilliant red or purple. The fragrant wind often stays with the poppies.’ Three minuscule iron-red seals, each only 2-3 mm in size. The two-character yuwan mark neatly painted in underglaze cobalt blue to the base.


Provenance
: From a private London collection, United Kingdom.

Condition
: Superb condition with only minor wear and minimal firing irregularities. Faint stains to the white porcelain around the foot. The interior base with a small firing flaw.

Weight: 42.2 g
Dimensions: Height 5.7 cm


LOT ESSAY


The base of the present lot features the Yuwan mark
, a two-character inscription that translates to either "Imperial Curio" (as referenced in Gerard Tsang and Hugh Moss, Arts from the Scholar's Studio, Hong Kong, 1986, page 124, no. 91) or "Imperial Plaything" (as mentioned in Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 May 2018, lot 2930). This mark is significant. In the 18th century, Curio Boxes gained immense popularity within the Imperial courts. Today, the National Palace Museum in Taipei proudly exhibits numerous such boxes, most still preserving their original contents. These contents constitute a painstakingly curated assortment of miniature Imperial wares, encompassing various items like jades, snuff bottles, porcelains, enameled objects, and even Japanese lacquers. Notably, the usual falangcai wares were incompatible with these boxes due to their size constraints. This discrepancy may have led to the creation of significantly smaller falangcai vessels, ensuring that this group of paramount Imperial wares could find representation within the curio collections as well. The present lot, exceptionally compact at a mere 5.7 cm, potentially served this specific purpose.


The miniature vessel is potted in the shape of a poppy bud
in white porcelain of the purest homogenous structure, applied with an even milky-white glaze, which is suffused by a myriad of microscopic bubbles, unseen to the naked eye, but well visible under a strong magnifying glass. As a result, the surface feels smooth and silky. The lip is just slightly protruding, unobtrusive yet distinct once perceived. The white glaze stops evenly above a circular recess around the foot, which not only mirrors the lip perfectly, but also leads to an immaculately cut foot rim, unglazed and thus revealing the white ware. This foot rim is a distinguishing mark of miniature falangcai wares, unique like a fingerprint, as the literature comparison below shows.


The poppies are depicted in their three life stages
, thereby symbolizing the
Three Perfections, known as sanjue
, representing poetry, painting, and calligraphy. This artwork seamlessly combines all three into a singular masterpiece: The painting impeccably captures the flowers, showcasing meticulous observation from nature and exceptional control of the enamels. The flowers are portrayed in a wild growth, with wind-blown petals and bent stems, evoking a sense of disorderly beauty. The remarkably expressive calligraphy, skillfully written by a seasoned calligrapher, presents a striking juxtaposition with the untamed flowers while also evoking a timeless sense of balance. This sentiment is deepened by the accompanying poem, which extols the poppy, therewith subtly addressing the unwavering loyalty and devotion between lovers, a common subject in Chinese literature and legend.


Falangcai (foreign colours)
designates enameling on copper, porcelain and glass undertaken in specialized workshops in the Yangxindian (Hall of Mental Cultivation), in immediate vicinity of the imperial living quarters in the Forbidden City and under the Emperors' direct scrutiny. The enameling workshops had been initiated by European artisans working at the court during the Kangxi period, who encouraged the production of new enamel colors to be applied to extremely refined, blank porcelain vessels, supplied only for that particular purpose by the imperial porcelain kilns of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, south of the Yangzi River.


Porcelain enameling was done
in close physical proximity to court painting, and artists of the Imperial Painting Academy, both Chinese and Western, were also recruited to paint in the enameling workshops. Painting styles therefore tend to show distinct influences of Western court artists, who introduced a naturalistic painting manner where the impression of volume, depth and perspective is conveyed through highly sophisticated shading, of which the present lot is a remarkable example, also due to its extremely small size. The realistic representation of the leaves and stems as well as the accomplished nuancing of the flowers show the direct influence of Western artists such as the Italian Giuseppe Castiglione (AD 1688 - 1766), who served as court painter under the three main Qing emperors: Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong.


Never before or after, anywhere in the world,
were porcelain painters exposed to similar pressure as in these tightly circumscribed workshops, where they were to meet the exact imperial expectations while being subject to immediate scrutiny from the monarch’s eyes. The whole setup was small in scale, not least for the simple reasons of space and inconvenience to ordinary palace life, and here individual artists would create individual works of art, incomparable even to the mass production even of fine porcelains for the court undertaken at Jingdezhen. The workshops resembled sophisticated laboratories rather than art ateliers, and court artists, artisans and technicians teamed up there to explore new scientific discoveries, manufacturing methods and substances.


Every piece of porcelain produced in these workshops is unique, quality is unsurpassed and numbers, naturally, are very limited. Many examples, such as the present lot, do exist only once.


The poppy flower
is easy to recognize by its frilly, less than paper-thin petals, its buds enveloped by a green hull, which it sheds when they open, and a hairy stem. Flower painting had been practiced in China since at least the Song dynasty (960-1279) but became a specialist genre due to the virtuosity of Yun Shouping (1633-1690), probably China’s most famous flower painter. His depictions of poppies inspired many painters, particularly in the Kangxi and Yongzheng periods, such as Wang Wu (1632-1690), Yun Bing (1670-1710), Ma Yuanyu (c. 1669-1722), Zou Yigui (1686-1772) and others, all of whom painted poppies, often in the form of album leaves representing one of the months of the year.


However, this ‘photogenic’ flower was rarely depicted on porcelain.
On falangcai wares from the Beijing enameling workshops, it was used already during the Kangxi period, but in a quite different, more lush and imposing form, with the flowers set against a purple ground (see Portrayals from a Brush Divine, A Special Exhibition on the Tricentennial of Giuseppe Castiglione’s Arrival in China, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2015, cat. no. I-17). In the Yongzheng reign, it appears to have been rarely used in the Beijing workshops, but rendered in a manner much closer to the present lot.


Literature comparison:

For a closely related falangcai vase, see Porcelains with Cloisonné Enamel Decoration and Famille Rose Decoration, The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, volume 39, Hong Kong, 1999, page 28, no. 24 (
fig. 1
). For a related falangcai vase, also with seals painted in iron-read, hardly legible because of their minuscule size, see ibid., page 29, no. 25 (
fig. 2
). Note that this vase has a height of 7.8 cm, still 2.1 cm larger than the present lot, and that the foot rim of this vase is near-identical to that of the present lot (
fig. 3 & 4
). For three related examples with non-Imperial marks, one with falangcai, one with famille rose, and one with grisaille decoration, see ibid., page 72, 73, and 89, no. 62, 63, 78. Compare also an Imperial falangcai ‘poppy’ bowl, Qianlong mark and period, with similar undulating stems, sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 2 October 2018, lot 1. For an essay about puce enamels used for falangcai wares, see Porcelain with Painted Enamels of Qing Yongzheng period (1723-1735), The National Palace Museum, pages 308-313. Note that the puce enamels found in the withered poppy on the present lot bear the same sulfuric-yellow oxidation marks described and illustrated in the article.




十八世紀琺瑯彩玉玩款虞美人小瓶


採用琺瑯彩繪製虞美人圖，展現了花朵週期的各個階段：含苞待放、盛開和枯萎，呈現出清朗的玫瑰色、藍色和薰衣草色，細節処如花莖上的絨毛、脈絡和花蕊栩栩如生；葉子鋪色同樣豐富，各種色調的檸檬綠和蕨綠。每朵花都充滿活力。因爲琺瑯彩，花朵顯得很有立體感。


款識：
花開紅紫逞艷色，香風常留虞美人；玉玩；印


來源：
英國倫敦私人收藏。

品相：
狀況極佳，只有輕微磨損和極少的燒製不規則現象。足部周圍的白瓷上有淡淡的污漬。內部底座有一個小的燒製缺陷。

重量：42.2 克
尺寸：高 5.7 厘米




微型小瓶以虞美人花蕾為形
，以白瓷製成，釉色均勻細膩，釉面佈滿無數微小氣泡，在放大鏡下清晰可見。 表面光滑。 白釉均勻地停在足部周圍的圓形凹槽上方，足沿無釉，露出了白色胎。


琺瑯彩
是集瓷、畫、詩、書、印為一體的高雅藝術品，高貴奢華。 而這件小平這三者完美結合成一件傑作：這幅畫完美地捕捉了花朵的細節，展示了對自然的細緻觀察和對琺瑯的卓越控制。 花朵大膽綻放，花瓣被風吹動，莖部彎曲，喚起一種無序的美感。 由經驗豐富的書法家精心書寫的極具表現力的書法，與野性的花朵呈現出驚人的和諧。 而這首詩更加象徵人之間堅定不移的忠誠和奉獻，這是中國文學和傳說中的常見主題。


文獻比較:

一件非常相近的琺瑯彩瓶，見《Porcelains with Cloisonné Enamel Decoration and Famille Rose Decoration》，《故宮博物院藏文物珍品全集》，卷39，香港，1999年，頁28，編號24 (圖
1
)。一件相近的琺瑯彩瓶，也有鐵紅色的款，但由於尺寸過小看不清楚，見上書，頁29，編號25 (圖
2
)。請注意此瓶高7.8 厘米，比本瓶大2.1 厘米 ，此花瓶足緣與本拍品幾乎相同(圖
3
)。三件相近的瓶，一件是琺瑯彩、一件是粉彩、一件是純灰繪畫，見上書，頁72、73和89，編號62、63、78。比較一件乾隆時期御製罌粟碗，有相似的起伏莖，見香港蘇富比，2018年10月2日，lot 1。一篇關於琺瑯彩瓷器使用的深褐色琺瑯的文章，見《Porcelain with Painted Enamels of Qing Yongzheng period (1723-1735)》，北京故宮博物院，頁308-313。本文中提到運用深褐色琺瑯描繪枯萎罌粟，與本文中描述和說明的相同的硫酸黃色氧化痕跡。