Painted in doucai colors with the eight Buddhist emblems (ba jixiang)circling the inside of the bowls, a cavieto of a lobed green medallion issuing peach sprays and plumes of lotus, he center a ribbon spiral bordered with inward-pointing petals, the exterior covered with a cornicopia of blooms tied together with lotus leaves and their tendrils all within a double band of underglazed blue circling the mouth and a band of ruyi about the foot rim, the base with a six character Jiaqing seal mark in underglazed blue within a double circle and of the period.7 7/8th in.
Provenance: Butterfields and Bohhams 1991
Plates of this decoration and reign mark have appeared in the market although with much less frequency in the last ten years. See Sotheby's Hong Kong, November 27, 1987, lot 165; Sotheby's Hong Kong, April 28, 1992, lot 225.
It is interesting to note the similarity between these two bowls with a Jiaqing mark and their counterparts made during the previous reign of Qianlong, his father. See Sotheby's Hong Kong, November 24, 1987, lot 156 for a Qianlong mark and period duplicate of the pair offered here. There was a reason for this similarity as H.A. Van Orrt opines: "The porcelain of the early years of Chia-ch'ing [Jiaqing] can hardly be distinguished except by the mark, from that of Ch'ien-lung [Qianlong]. Many a good piece was still turned out during this period. The great artists were not pushed aside at once, but were probably left to the fate of slowly fading away.***...even the tou-ts'ai [Doucai] techniques persisted and was applied with artistry." H.A. Van Orrt, "Chinese Porcelain of the 19th and 20th Centuries", De Tijdstroom B.V., The Netherlands, 1977, p. 19,20.
