Footnotes

• 清光緒 黃地墨彩花鳥紋筒式瓶一對 礬紅「大雅齋、永慶長春」楷書款
  
  Provenance: a European private collection
  
  來源：歐洲私人收藏
  
  The mark Dayazhai (Studio of the Greater Odes) has been associated with the Dowager Empress Cixi. Although no such hall has been identified, a wooden framed plaque has been found in the Imperial workshops, bearing the characters Dayazhai and with one of two seals reading Tiandi Yijia Chun: see Guo Xingkuan and Wang Guangyao, Guanyang Yuci, Beijing, 2007, pp.145-147. According to the authors, in the 12th year of Tongzhi (1873) work began on the restoration of the Yuanming Yuan, and by 1874, the interior of the Tiandi Yijia Chun would have been in need of furnishing.
  
  Rosemary Scott suggests in her article For Her Majesty's Pleasure - Dayazhai Porcelain, Christie's Hong Kong, 3 December 2008, p.23, that the new-style porcelains were not produced until the Guangxu reign, and by the second year of Guangxu, 4,922 porcelains had been produced bearing both Dayazhai and Tiandi Yijia Chun marks. As the restoration of the Yuanming Yuan had been halted for economic reasons, the vessels would have been delivered to the Forbidden City.
  
  The ground colour yellow, as on this present lot, is probably the rarest to find on Dayazhai ceramics, because of the long-established Imperial connotation of using yellow on objects and textiles associated with an Emperor or Empress. The design of birds perched on wisteria, together with the mark Yong qing chang chun, can be seen on a fish bowl illustrated by Guo Xingkuan and Wang Guangyao, ibid.p.207.
  
  Compare also a pair of yellow-ground fishbowls with Dayazhai marks sold in these rooms, 8 November 2012, lot 110.