A large Chinese Imperial wucai 'dragon and phoenix' bowl
Qing dynasty, Qianlong mark and period

A large Chinese Imperial wucai 'dragon and phoenix' bowl

Qing dynasty, Qianlong mark and period

Vividly painted in underglaze blue and enamelled in green, yellow, iron-red and aubergine with descending phoenixes alternating striding dragons chasing flaming pearls, the centre with iron-red dragon roundel, the base with six-character seal mark in underglaze blue, 15.5cm diameter.

清乾隆 五彩龍鳳紋盌，青花篆書「大清乾隆年製」款

The use of the various patterns of porcelain within the Imperial household was highly codified during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Bowls painted and enamelled in the wucai palette with descending phoenixes alternating striding dragons were first produced during the reign of Emperor Kangxi. Like many of the new designs introduced in this period, the wucai motif of dragons and phoenixes found its inspiration in patterns of the Ming dynasty. An Imperial Wanli wucai dish with a design of dragons and phoenixes is the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of art, New York, Accession Number: 17.118.17.

Bowls of this design were produced throughout the 18th century and continued to be produced through the whole Qing dynasty, with many Qianlong and Daoguang examples known. In the twenty-first year of Qianlong (1756), an inventory check of Imperial wares of various mediums was carried out by the directors of the Qianqing Palace, the Yangxin Palace, and the Old Summer Palace; this inventory includes a grand-total of 943 wucai ‘dragon and phoenix’ bowls, bearing Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong marks, across five different lists.

The fact that these bowls were produced in such large numbers in the early Qing dynasty, alongside their presence in the Imperial palaces, implies that they were used as dining wares for the Imperial family; Qing dynasty records also suggest that these bowls were used for wedding celebrations and Imperial Qianqing Palace banquets, due to their auspiciousness.

The five-clawed dragon is a symbol of the dignity and power of the Emperor, and represents fertility, while the phoenix embodies the warmth of the sun and helps produce male offspring. When depicted together they generally represent the Emperor and Empress and are symbolic of marital bliss. A common auspicious phrased used in Chinese weddings is ‘long feng cheng xiang’ - meaning 'Dragon and Phoenix bring Auspiciousness'. The auspiciousness of the present motif is further compounded by the use of Buddhist Emblems in the border at the rim.

These bowls are also recorded to have been used as Imperial gifts: when the Neapolitan Jesuit missionary Matteo Ripa, known in Chinese as Ma Guoxian（马国贤）, on the first year of Yongzheng (1723) requested a leave of absence from the Imperial court to return to Italy after a series of bereavements in his family, the emperor Yongzheng bestowed him with a gift of porcelain wares, which included forty of these wucai ‘dragon and phoenix’ bowls. A similar occurrence is recorded on the 9th year of Yongzheng: when two Westerners,  Ruose Li and Weida Na, requested permission to return to Europe, they were gifted a number of porcelains, including eighty ‘dragon and phoenix’ bowls.

Whilst, from the Yongzheng period onwards, wucai and doucai enamels started being replaced with the famille rose palette of enamels, ‘dragon and phoenix’ bowls in wucai enamels were one of the few designs whose production continued uninterrupted, remaining a staple of the Imperial factories throughout the Qing dynasty.

Cf. A Kangxi prototype of this pattern, in the Qing Court Collection, Beijing, is illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - 38 - Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, Beijing, 1999, p. 148, no. 136. A Qianlong example was sold by Sotheby's New York, 17 March 2021, lot 174; another, also with Qianlong seal mark, was sold by Christie's New York, 20 - 21 March 2014, lot 2129.

For Daoguang examples, see Bonhams Hong Kong, 29 May 2024, lot 39; and Christie's New York, 15 - 16 March 2015, lot 3155.