A fine and rare Chinese blue and white 'bagua' bowl

Qing dynasty, Kangxi mark and period

The thinly potted vessel rising from a straight foot to a gently everted rim, finely painted around the exterior in washes of cobalt blue with eight trigrams, bagua, symbolising the eight natural phenomena, above a band of crested waves, the interior with a taijitu symbol to the centre within double rings around the base and to the interior of the rim, the base with a six-character mark also within a double circle.

12.1cm diameter.

Provenance: the Collection of Frederick Knight, the nephew of Henry Knight (1903-1970)

Bluett and Sons (label).

清 康熙 八卦海水紋盌

來源：Frederick Knight 收藏，Bluett and Sons (標籤)。

The exterior of the bowl is decorated with the Eight Trigrams (bagua) symbolising the eight Dao/Tao natural forces: Heaven, Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Thunder, Mountain and Lake. Each consists of three lines, each line either “broken” or “unbroken”. The interior depicts the yin-yang symbol, which is often seen in conjunction with the Eight Trigrams. By the end of the Ming period, this diagram had become a widespread representation of Chinese cosmology, representing the fundamental principles of reality.

Cf. Similar examples can be found in Chinese Porcelain, The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong, 1987, pl. 50, where it is noted that bagua are rarely found on Qing Dynasty porcelain.

There are a number of examples in notable museum collections, including a bowl in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Qing Shunzhi Kangxi chao qinghua ci, Beijing, 2005, no. 118; one in the Percival David Foundation, British Museum, no. PDF C619; and one in the The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, accession no. F1995.8.

For an example offered at auction within the last decade, see Christies, New York, 18 September 2015, lot 2233.