Gorringes
Lot 193
A good large Chinese blue and white brush pot, bitong, Kangxi period, c.1700-15, finely painted with a scholar painting a screen in a garden next to his studio with attendant boys holding his brushes and paints, the reverse with a seven column inscribed poem and private studio seal mark 'mu shi' (bamboo and rock), within double line borders, indented disc to base, 18cm high, 20.2cm diameter, small chip to footProvenance - from a private collection, in the family before 1980. A longer version of this private studio mark Mushi ju (Bamboo and Rock Retreat) was a favourite name of Qing scholars. This mark can be found on several porcelains of the period, some of them dated and ranging from 1690 to 1712. Mushi ju is likely to have been the name of a private kiln whose products included underglaze blue and wucai wares. There is a brushpot, with the same mark, dated to the year corresponding to 1709, in the Guimet Museum, from the Grandidier Collection illustrated in The World's Great Collections, Oriental Ceramics, vol. 7, Tokyo, 1981, no. 36; another brushpot in the Shanghai Art Museum is illustrated in Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1998, no. 111, pp. 166-167, and a flowerpot and stand with Mushi ju mark, part of the Salting bequest, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
