A fine yellow-glazed bowl, Mark and period of Zhengde | 明正德 黃釉盌 《大明正德年製》款

Bluett & Sons Ltd., London, 1950s.

Collection of Henry M. Knight (d. 1971). 

Christie's London, 6th June 1988, lot 134.

J.J. Lally & Co., New York, 1988.

Bluett & Sons Ltd.，倫敦，1950年代

亨利•奈特（1971年逝）收藏

倫敦佳士得1988年6月6日，編號134

藍理捷，紐約，1988年

A result of the technological advancement at the kilns in Jingdezhen, yellow-glazed monochrome porcelain solely reserved for use in state rituals first appeared in the Ming dynasty. Monochrome wares of this type required absolute precision in potting, glazing and firing as even the smallest imperfection resulted in the destruction of the entire piece. Amongst all the different monochrome glazes, the vibrant glaze found on the present bowl has been aptly termed 'imperial yellow', believed to have been made exclusively for the imperial court and the Emperor himself. 

The present bowl was one of two 'fine' Zhengde yellow-glazed bowls (each 16.2cm diameter) in the collection of Henry M. Knight; one of which had previously been in the collection of Lord Cunliffe, which Knight purchased from Bluett & Sons, London in June 1954; the second bowl was also acquired from Bluett's several years later, in 1959. One of the bowls was sold in our London rooms in the single-owner sale of Knight's collection, 12th May 1970, lot 50, where it was acquired by the Dutch dealer Nystad Oude Kunst on behalf of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. It was subsequently illustrated in Beatrice Jansen, Chinese Ceramiek, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 1976, pl. 195. The remaining bowl—the present lot—was sold from the collection several years later in 1988.

Compare other bowls of this type, including one also previously in the Cunliffe Collection, illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. 2, London, 1994, pl. 699; one sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 15th November 1988, lot 150; one sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 28th November 2005, lot 1418; another from the collection of Ira and Nancy Koger sold at Christie's New York, 19th September 2006, lot 243; and lastly, one sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 31st May 2010, lot 1858. 

Henry M. Knight (d. 1971), was a discerning collector who, from 1930 until his death, assembled a major collection of Chinese ceramics and works of art, focusing mainly on Ming and Qing porcelains. In remembering the collector, Robert Bluett wrote: 'Henry Knight, who built up perhaps the best collection of eighteenth-century porcelains in Europe as well as magnificent early pieces, was fond of telling how it was my late father who told him to buy "Chinese taste" porcelains. Their time would come, my father used to say, and how right he was.' (see Roy Davids and Dominic Jellinek, Provenance. Collectors, Dealers and Scholars: Chinese Ceramics in Britain and America, Great Haseley, 2011, p. 276). A superb and rare Kangxi yuzhi mark and period pink-ground falangcai bowl, previously in the Henry M. Knight Collection, was sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 2nd April 2018, lot 1.