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Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Porcelain glaze color, most of them can be recognized at a glance - blue and white is blue and white, glaze red is glaze red, can not be mistaken.

But there are exceptions to everything.

The Qing Dynasty had a series of blue porcelain, which were often difficult to judge by photographs alone, and it was sometimes difficult to distinguish even when they saw the actual objects. At this season's Hong Kong auction, Sotheby's brings London antique dealer Marchant Marchant's porcelain special, and we take this opportunity to see the silly moon white, sky blue, and imitation glaze.

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze
Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze
Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Lot 3516 Qingqianlong Sky blue glaze bas-relief cover bean pair

"Qianlong Year of the Great Qing Dynasty"

Height: 24.5 & 24.8 cm

Source: Gandolfini Family Collection, Gandolfini, Italy

Marchant Marchant, London, 28 October 2009

Private collection in Greece

Estimate: HK$3,000,000 - 4,000,000

The "bean" is a hemispherical column vessel with trumpet-shaped feet that is used to display sacrificial food utensils during ceremonial banquets. The ancient bean lid itself has a foot support, which can be flipped over to hold food independently, and the design is clever. Coming to the Qing Dynasty, the design has changed, and the cover has become a rope button decoration.

In the national sacrifices of the Qing Dynasty, the main nine altars and three temples used porcelain sacrifice vessels, and the remaining twelve temples used bronze, wood, lacquer, and jade sacrifice vessels. Although the sacrificial vessel is made of porcelain and new elements have been added to the design, it is still made according to ancient bronzes, such as jue, gui (sound track), beans and so on.

Most of these porcelain ceremonial vessels are monochromatic glazed and are themselves classified by color. Since the beginning of the Shang Zhou, the five elements, colors, and altars have been closely related. For example, the temple of the sun stipulates that in the east, the color should be blue; the temple of earth should be in the north, and the color should be black.

The pair of Qianlong Dynasty beans in this auction, Sotheby's refers to the "sky blue glaze", but the color used in the nine altars and three temple ceremonial vessels does not have "sky blue glaze", and the closest is the "moon white glaze" of the moon altar.

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Song Jun kiln moon white glazed purple red spot bowl | the Forbidden City in Beijing

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Qing Kangxi Sky blue glazed flowers | the Forbidden City in Beijing

Readers who like high ancient porcelain will surely not be unfamiliar with the moon white.

Moon white, the color name of ancient Chinese fabrics, varies slightly in shades of different periods, basically between light blue and medium blue. In the Song Dynasty, the moon white glaze shined in the porcelain world, especially the jun kiln, which was even more famous.

The basic glaze color of the jun kiln is a variety of blue milk glazes of different shades, the darker one is called sky blue, the lighter one is called azure, and the lighter one is called moon white. In summary, moon white is a light blue with a milky white or milky feeling.

As for the sky blue glaze of the Qing Dynasty, it is the new glaze color of Kangxi Chuangyao, which means a clear and clear blue sky. However, this Qing Dynasty sky blue is not static.

Geng Baochang, a ceramic connoisseur, pointed out that the sky blue glaze of the Qing Dynasty "since the beginning of Kangxi, through the Yongzheng and Qianlong dynasties, the color has changed differently: the color of the Kangxi period is light; the Yongzheng is slightly darker; the Qianlong period is slightly faint yellow-green due to the fat enamel", and the Yongzheng sky blue glaze is "the light and faint one is similar to the previous dynasty... It is moon-white; the color is dark, just like the blue sky after a clear day."

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Qing Yongzheng Sky Blue Glazed Skimmer Small Plate | 2022 Sotheby's Hong Kong | is estimated at HK$400,000 - 600,000

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Qing Yongzheng Sky Blue Glazed String Pattern Handicap Bottle Pair | 2012 Christie's Hong Kong | HK$34,260,000 sold

The color characteristics of jun kiln and Qing dynasty sky blue glaze:

Jun kiln: blue milk glaze, the deeper one is called sky blue, the lighter one is called azure, and the lighter one is called moon white

Qing Dynasty sky blue glaze: light color like moon white, dark color like sky blue

The moon white glaze is a light blue with milky light, while the Qing Dynasty sky blue glaze can also be as light as the moon white. It can be seen from this that it is sometimes not easy to distinguish between the two.

In fact, distinguishing colors is often subjective. A few years ago, a picture of a striped skirt was circulated, some people saw blue and black, some people saw white gold, and the Internet was turned upside down. Everyone and your partner's relatives and friends must have experienced this kind of situation when you see it is purple, but the other party says it is pink.

This is especially true when it comes to the difference between shades of color. If there is a blue color, how do you think you choose between sky blue and azure blue, or between azure and moon white?

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

It was the Qianlong Dynasty beans that were auctioned

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Qingqianlong Moon White Glazed Imitation Bronze Pattern Bean | 2015 Christie's Hong Kong | HK$237,500 sold

What's more, moon white, azure blue, and sky blue are sometimes synonymous. For example, when Sotheby's auctioned a Kangxi sky blue glazed 100-piece cylinder in 2017, the catalogue said: "... The Kangxi Dynasty was founded in Jingdezhen. Its glaze color is light and blue, transparent and pure, like azure blue, so it is called moon white glaze, or sky blue glaze."

However, at this season's auction, moon white and sky blue seem to be separated into two different glaze colors.

Sotheby's said that most of the same kind of porcelain beans are glazed with blue, moon white, red or yellow glaze, and only a few like the pair at this auction are applied with sky blue glaze. The catalogue also points out that Christie's also sold a piece of sky blue glazed beans in 2015.

However, we checked the information, and the Qianlong Dynasty bean auctioned in 2015, Christie's judged to be "moon white glaze" rather than "sky blue glaze", which was estimated to be HK$100,000 - 150,000, and the commission was HK$237,000.

It can be seen that the same kind of light blue with milky feeling, some experts see it as moon white glaze, and some experts see it as sky blue glaze. It is a pair of lanes at auction, whether it is moon white or sky blue, and see if we can judge it when we look at the actual object later.

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze
Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Lot 3512 Qingqianlong imitation Ru glaze through the ear bottle

Height: 19.2 cm

Source (Value Point Network Collation): Palm Beach Private Collection, USA

Sotheby's New York, 29 March 2011, lot 21 (sold for US$794,500)

Estimate: HK$5,000,000 - 7,000,000

Another kind of sky blue glaze that is very similar to the Qing Dynasty is the imitation Ru glaze.

When Chinese ceramics were first introduced to the Song Dynasty, they reached the extreme in the pursuit of vessel shape and glaze color. In this golden age of monochrome glaze, the world-famous Ru kiln was called king; among the emperors of later generations who admired the aesthetics of The Ru kiln, Qianlong was the most high-profile.

In the Ming Dynasty, when Xuande was in power, he began to imitate the burning of Ru kilns; in the Qing Dynasty, Yu Yongqi revived, and the carcass ash was reddish brown, quite similar to the incense gray tires of the Song Dynasty Ru kilns. What about glaze? According to Geng Baochang, most of them are also sky blue.

Sky blue glaze, and most of the sky blue imitation kiln, just look at the text is also difficult to distinguish.

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Northern Song Dynasty Ru kiln daffodil basin | Taipei National Palace

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Ming Xuande imitated the Ru kiln pan | the Forbidden City in Beijing

Another feature of monochrome glaze is that the color is very affected by light, and it is difficult to accurately grasp the photo. In the case of the Ru kiln, for example, the same piece of porcelain, the color displayed by different photos in the museum is also different from time to time.

However, in the case of sky blue glaze and imitation glaze in the Qing Dynasty, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the actual object and the imitation glaze.

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Zhu Zhanji's Xingle Tu depicts Emperor Xuande playing with a pot| the Forbidden City in Beijing

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Song Longquan green glaze through the ear bottle

Finally, a little bit about the shape of the instrument of the ear bottle.

Chinese porcelain, there are practical wine vessels, flower utensils, but also religious offerings, ceremonial vessels. However, like the ear-piercing bottle, the prototype comes from the throwing arrow game prop, which is quite rare.

Ear-piercing bottles were popular in the Song Dynasty, and the shape of the instrument was imitation of the pot style. Throwing pots is a game played by ancient scholars and doctors during drinking banquets, which was seen in the Spring and Autumn Warring States, and was especially popular since the Qin and Han Dynasties abolished archery ceremonies, and did not begin to decline until the Qing Dynasty.

According to scholars, the pots are mostly made of metal or pottery, and the shape of the vessel was not added until the Jin Dynasty. In the nearly two-thousand-year history of pot throwing, endless rules of play have been studied in various places. For example, originally the arrow was thrown at the middle of the pot to score points, but later developed the arrow lying horizontally on the mouth of the pot or above the ear, the score may be higher.

This Qianlong imitation glazed ear bottle, which was raised at Sotheby's in New York in 2011, changed hands for US$794,000 (HK$6.2 million), but this time it is only undervalued at HK$5 million, and see what the hammer will eventually fall.

Other lots in the same venue

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze
Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Lot 3505 Qingyongzheng pink glazed plum bottle

"Great Qing Yongzheng Year System"

Height: 23.8 cm

Source: Sven Olof Sandberg Collection, purchased from London in the 1960s and passed down from the family ever since

Estimate: HK$2,500,000 - 3,500,000

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze
Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Lot 3508 Qing Yongzheng Carmine Chrysanthemum Petal Plate

Diameter: 17.8 cm

Estimate: HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze
Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Lot 3518 Qingqianlong Coral red ground left white bamboo pattern small bowl pair

Size: 11.8 cm

Valuation: HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze
Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Lot 3518 Qing Yongzheng Sky blue glazed open bowl

Size: 12 cm

Estimate: HK$1,200,000 - 1,800,000

Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze
Blue or another blue? Moon white, sky blue, imitation glaze

Lot 3513 Qing Yongzheng White glazed scratched dragon pattern long-necked vial

Size: 11.4 cm

Source: Richard Marchant Richard Marchant Collection, deposited circa 1965

Estimate: HK$1,000,000 - 1,500,000

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