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xuande wucai bowl ? need help please.

by Prabhu Kafle
(Sydney, Australia)

hi i have reasearched many many many times on the net and i can't seem to find more about this bowl. it's alsmost 17.5 cm " width on the top and 7.5" deep bowl.

i have again tried and tried to get more information about this bowl as i want to sell it. by your guidance may be i can contact christies or sotheby's regarding this matter, but before i do i just want to know in an average how much reserve price should i put on this xuande bowl which i recently bought for 850 dollars. ;) well i know that did shock you. but it's all because of hard work and going around garage sales and small auction houses in towns and villages. i have attached few pictures.



well i found that this type of xuande bowl is the first to use underglazed blue and white and then again use enamel for other colors. and also found that these are extremely rare as i haven't seen any of these type come up to any auctions yet. and as you can see the lanca script in the bowl the similar with stem cup was sold in sothebys and christies for a big money.



this bowl has the yellow orange color but there are some plate and dishes and porcelain made in xuande that was decorate in such a color instead of a white one. i nearly tried to clean it with a strong solvent but when i found that some xuande are made of this color as seen in yellow , dirty color i was lucky that i didn't tried to scrubbb it off with strong chemical.



can you please, let me know if this is rare ? and in an average how much reserve price i should put. am pretty sure it's 101% original. cheers. i would really really appreciate it. thanks.



i know there is one stem cup and one dish bowl in tibet and one broken example in a musuem in china but do you know if it's classified as extrememly rare, rare or general. thanks. i would appreciate your help on this matter and hope that you are also excited to see something truly in it's original form. cheers.


Australia

p.s. i guess the copper or bronze box as shown for storing the bowl must be made later. i have just been interested in chinese antiques since 3 months. so sorry if i have misunderstood anythiing here.










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Feb 12, 2011
 thank you for all your help peter
by: Prabhu kafle

hi peter thanks for all your help. i bought this a long long time ago at that price. actually when the tibetans came from tibet to nepal few decades ago.. and this came from a monastery in tibet i wil have to reconfirm which monastery but it did. looking at it and feeling it makes me sure that's this is a genuine bowl. how can i get a test done with reputable test companies like oxford. will it damage my piece. is there any other way that i can do it without damaging. thanks.
here are some examples of the bowl and the reddish organe glaze it has. plese, have a look at it and let me know what you think. thanks heaps peter.
dscantique.blogspot.com/2009/11/wucai-on-blue-white-of-xuande.html
www.koh-antique.com/history/historyming2.htm
www.flickr.com/photos/29848824@N05/3506217381

Hi, I'm not sure which one you mean resembles yours. But the one on Flickr does have a completely different painting. Look at how plump the duck is, for example. If they were made in the same kiln/period, they would look similar. I am not sure if you do see the differences, or if you think they are irrelevant, but if they were made in the same period, they would have been made inthe same kiln, and would be similar because the same people would have painted them.
And the background white color on those pictures looks more real, not orange...
Feb 10, 2011
 Xuande Wucai Bowl
by: Prabhu Kafle

yes, peter you are exactly right. this is a rare item and i am confident this is original. even few people even know that this does existed and few people has seen this types of xuande wucai porcelain as stated in one site. this is underglaze blue porcelain with again anotehr layer of enamelled colours and then glazed again. well this type of glze with yellowing orange was applied in some of the xuande bowls. and since xuande invited many of the tibetan buddhist and high lamas , these probably were made for monastery for blessing to the kings and given to the lamas, as you can see the tibetan lanca script too. so this was must have been in the tibetan monastery or some lamas and monks but when the tibetans left tibet just some decades ago they came to nepal and some went to india. thus this came in my hand as am from Nepal too. i bought it. if you search for xuande wucai porcelain you will see similar images. am very excited about this and very curuios to find more about this. will visit asian art. i would really appreicate more informa8ion and help from you. the only examples i know of these type of porcelains are in sagya temple in tibet and may be shanghai musuem. if this porcelain is of that period what would the estimates be. i would really love to hear it. cheers. prabhu


Hi, FYI information, I have seen some rare Chinese porcelains found in Tibet, at an exhibition of Tibetan artifacts, recently. There was not difference in color, compared to those made for China, however.
Feb 09, 2011
 bowl
by: peter

Hello,
You call this Wucai and describe it as using enamel. But, to my knowledge Wucai doesn't use enamel. I may be wrong, but as far as I know enamel was introduced to China only after the Ming dynasty.

This bowl has several features that don't seem to be right. And, in my experience there have no porcelain items of any period been made having a reddish (or orange) background color like this. The only things that may cause colors like this are a) excavated items whose glaze was infiltrated by the surrounding soil, and b) intentional application of the color to make the glaze look old.

This is my own opinion and I encourage you to ask the opinion of others. I have never seen such an item.
Did you show the item in the asianart.com forum?

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