A blue and white cylindrical vase, rolwagen Mid 17th century
254
A blue and white cylindrical vase, rolwagen
Mid 17th century
Finely and delicately painted around the body with an audience scene, a dignitary in front of a large textile drape greeting a tray-bearer beside two servants and a horse, one with a large banner, three servants at the right-hand-side also standing holding bamboo-handled pennants. 46cm (18in) high
Sold for £44,450 inc. premium

Footnotes

  • 十七世紀中期 青花人物故事圖筒式瓶

    Provenance: a Belgian private collection

    The origin of the peculiar Dutch name for this Transitional Period style of cylindrical vase is shrouded in mystery. For an interpretation which links the term to Dutch merchants in Batavia in the mid 17th century, see Colin Sheaf, Reflections on Transitional blue and white, Arts of Asia magazine, where the author proposes that the term is an early mis-transcription of a much more logical term for these 'new' sorts of vases whose principal feature was that they were intended to be rotated (or 'rolled') to read their decoration: they would therefore quite logically have been called by early Dutch merchants 'rolvasen'.

    For a related example with similar treatment of the dividing cloud scrolls but with upward-pointing palmettes at the rim, see Sir M.Butler, Seventeenth Century Chinese Porcelain from the Butler Family Collection, Alexandria, 1990, no.99. Another related vase was sold in these rooms, 11 November 2010, lot 364.

Category: Asian Art / Chinese Works of Art

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