Skip to main content

This auction has ended. View lot details

You may also be interested in

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

Lot 253

A spinach jade brushwasher
18th century

Amended
4 December 2008, 12:00 HKT
Hong Kong, Six Pacific Place

HK$110,000 - HK$120,000

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

A spinach jade brushwasher

18th century
Fashioned as a tied bunch of lotus and water reeds, the largest lotus leaf forming the receptacle, the interior accented with a crab, prawn, snail and frog, and a bug adorning the edge, the translucent deep green stone mottled with opaque pale green inclusions and black spots, the fitted wood stand carved en suite.
17cm (6¾in) long. (2).

Footnotes

For a similar example see Wan, Wang and Lu, Daily Life in the Forbidden City, New York, 1988, fig. 207, p. 151.

This subject matter was also popular in ivory and rhinoceros horn. For an ivory example in the Lushan Museum, see Liu, Lushun Museum, Beijing, 2004, p. 154.

The reason for the popularity of this motif is due to the fact that an old name in Chinese for crab was jia, a reference to the creature's shell, and the word for lotus is lian. Together, the crab and lotus formed the rebus lian ke jia di, meaning "first place in consecutive examinations". The lotus is also called hehua, and the common name for crab, xie, also combines to form the phrase hexia which means "harmony".


十八世紀 碧玉連科甲第葉形筆洗

Saleroom notices

Estimate should read: HK$110,000-120,000

Additional information

Bid now on these items

A rare Chinese group of the Tyrolean Dancers, Qianlong period, circa 1752