RARE CHINESE BLUE AND WHITE KO-SOMETSUKE 'HAWK ON STAND' SAUCER
MING DYNASTY, TIANQI PERIOD
Estimate: £600 - £800
Auction: 16 May 2025 from 09:00 BST
Description
明天啓 青花雄鷹立架圖碟
painted in the central medallion with a hawk perched on a stand decorated with brocade within double circles further with a floral band on the cavetto
Dimensions
13.2cm diameter
Footnote
Ko Sometsuke (古染付け), also known as ‘Tianqi porcelain’, refers to Chinese underglaze blue porcelain made in the unofficial kilns of Jingdezhen for a predominantly Japanese market in the 17th century.
In China, imagery of birds of prey traces back to the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Notable paintings by court artists of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) are mentioned in the Xuanhe Huapu, a treatise on painting of the Xuanhe era, 1119–25. In Chinese, ying is a homophone with the first character of “hero”, yingxiong. An eagle on rock is a rebus for yingxiong duli, meaning the independent spirit of a hero. A white falcon was depicted by Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1768) as the last work of his prolific career in 1765. This painting is in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.
The eighth-century Chronicles of Japan (Nihon shoki) states that the practice of hawking was introduced in the fourth century, after which it became an important seasonal activity at court. Since the Muromachi period (1392-1573), hawking was taken over largely by the warrior elite, who saw the bird of prey as a symbol of their own bravery and might. So potent was this symbol that the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616) banned trade in hawks in 1604 to emphasize his own hegemony. Imagery of hawks in their wild habitat, in cages or tethered to stands is prevalent on hanging scrolls, screens and sliding doors commissioned by the samurai elite. Examples of Japanese okimono model of a hawk in iron or silver standing on wooden stand, was sold respectively at: Christie's Hong Kong, 27 Nov 2018, lot 3825; Christie's New York, 21 Sep 2021, lot 11; and Bonhams London, 15 May 2014, lot 557.