A famille-verte 'month' cup, Mark and period of Kangxi | 清康熙 五彩牡丹花花神盃 《大清康熙年製》款

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 29th October 1991, lot 224 (one of two).

香港蘇富比1991年10月29日，編號224（其一）

Month cups depicting seasonal flowers in famille-verte accompanied by pertinent two-line poems represent a classic design of the Kangxi period. Very delicately potted, these month cups are meticulously painted in the proper wucai palette of underglaze blue and overglaze enamels, which was devised in the Ming dynasty, but rarely used in the Qing, when the underglaze colour was generally omitted. On these month cups, the designs are generally sketched on the unglazed porcelain in a faint underglaze blue.

The present cup represents the fourth month and is painted with a cluster of peonies with four red blooms and one yellow, growing behind pierced blue garden rocks. The scene is accompanied by the poem:

At dawn its beauty receives dew from a golden palm. 

In the evening the fragrance penetrates deep into the Jade Hall.

花神盃，繪四時花卉，配以古詩二句，詩畫相輔相成，誠康熙朝瓷作經典。五彩，自明有之，即以釉下鈷青及釉上彩料繪畫。康熙花神盃，坯冶精妙細膩，皆先以釉下淡青在坯上起草勾勒，沿襲明風，巧飾傳統五彩調子。

四月，畫一叢牡丹，綻開紅花四朵，另見黃花躲鈷青石後。

詩題：「曉艷遠分金掌露，暮香深惹玉堂風」