A Chinese powder blue teapot decorated with the Hundred Antiques. Kangxi

Modelled in a shape of a barrel, with a band of raised dots around the upper and lower sections, a curved handle on one side and an s-shaped spout on the other side, standing on a straight foot ring, and a flat cover with a finial in the shape of a buddhist lion. It is entierely painted in underglaze “powder blue” and over painted in gold. On either side is a rectangular panel with chamfered corners encloses a set of objects from the “Hundred Antiques” including a large bottle vase with a “cracked ice” ground.

Related works

For a teapot of the same form but with a panel decorated in the famille verte palette, see Noble Blue: The Enduring Appeal of Blue Ground Chinese Porcelain, Jorge Welsh Edition, 2023, pp. 206/207

For a teapot of a different form but with a very similar decoration, see Noble Blue: The Enduring Appeal of Blue Ground Chinese Porcelain, Jorge Welsh Edition, 2023, pp. 148/151.

Notice

This particular blue ground is known in Chinese as “chuiqing”, or “blown blue”, in French as “bleu poudré” or “bleu soufflé” and in English as “powder blue”.

The Hundred Antiques (Bai gu) is a miscellaneous or general collection of emblematic forms comprising the Eight Treasures, the Four Treasures, the symbols of Four Fine Arts (music, chess, calligraphy, and painting) together with numerous conventional representations of sacrificial vessels, flowers, animals.