A MASSIVE, RARE AND IMPOSING CHINESE IMPERIAL BLUE AND WHITE 'DOUBLE-PHOENIX' VASE, MEIPING

A MASSIVE, RARE AND IMPOSING CHINESE IMPERIAL BLUE AND WHITE 'DOUBLE-PHOENIX' VASE, MEIPING
WANLI SIX-CHARACTER MARK AND OF THE PERIOD 1573-1620

Heavily potted and boldly painted in shades of intense underglaze cobalt blue depicting a pair of phoenix, one flying upwards and the other downwards, each with long trailing tail feathers, all amidst lingzhi-shaped clouds and between overlapping lappet borders encircling the shoulders and base, the mark written in a line above the collar, 20kg, 55cm.

Provenance: from the collection of Mrs Millicent Fenwick (1864-1942), purchased from Stenhouse & Son, 106 Sandgate Road, Folkestone, 31st May 1917, and thence by descent. A copy of the original 1917 invoice is available.

Millicent Fenwick, 1864-1942 was born in London to Lord Robert Montagu and his second wife, Elizabeth Wade. Lord Montagu was a Member of Parliament for Huntingdonshire (1859-1874), and Westmeath (1874-1880) and a member of the Privy Council in 1867. Lord Robert Montagu inherited the Dukedom of Manchester in 1843. His marriage to Elizabeth Wade, a housemaid, scandalised London society. Millicent married Walter Fenwick in 1891, they had three sons and lived at Witham Hall, Lincolnshire (now an independent boarding school), and also Tixover Grange, Ketton, Rutland.

The family archives include letters between Stenhouse & Son and Millicent Fenwick, where her purchases are discussed and which include a note dated May 1917, where Stenhouse states ‘originally purchased by me from the late Mr Larkin’. An Inventory and Valuation from 1922, locates the vase in the Dining room at Tixover Grange, Ketton, Rutland.

For similar examples of Wanli phoenix meiping, see: The Oriental Ceramic Society Exhibition, Ming Blue and White Porcelain, London, 1946, cat. no. 60, later sold at Sotheby’s London, 8th July 1958, lot 13 and purchased by Bluett & Son. See also Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol.1, Tokyo, 1976, lot 953; Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 2nd May 2005, lot 646; Christie’s London, 11th May 2015, lot 12; Christie’s Paris, 20th June 2017, lot 208.

A closely related Wanli meiping in the British Museum, London, but decorated with a dragon is illustrated by Jessica Harrison-Hall, in Ming Ceramics, London, 2001, p.290, pl.11:32, where the author notes that 'eight blue-and-white meiping of this form, still with their covers, were discovered in the Wanli Emperor's tomb, the Ding Ling. They were among the relatively few porcelains discovered there when the tomb was investigated.'

During the Song and Yuan periods meiping were used as wine containers, while in the Qing dynasty, they were used primarily as flower vases or for display. In the Ming dynasty they were also used as ritual vessels and were placed in the tombs of Emperors, princes, aristocrats and high ranking generals.

明萬曆 青花祥雲飛鳳紋梅瓶《大明萬曆年製》青花楷書款來源：米莉森·芬威克（1864-1942）出生於倫敦，是羅伯特·蒙塔古公爵與其第二任妻子伊麗莎白·懷德的女兒。蒙塔古公爵曾是亨廷頓郡及威斯敏寺的議會成員，並在1867年擔任樞密院成員。蒙塔古公爵於1843年繼承了曼徹斯特公爵爵位。他與家庭女傭伊麗莎白懷德的婚姻曾令當時的倫敦社會轟動一時。米莉森年與沃塔·芬威克在1891年共諧連理，婚後育有三子，曾居住在威瑟姆莊園（現已改建成一所獨立寄宿學校）。 其家族檔案中收錄了米莉森與古董商Stenhouse & Son之間的書信，紀錄了二人對米莉森購入的收藏品的討論，其中在1917年5月的筆記中Stenhouse提到這件梅瓶購於已逝的拉肯先生。1922年的庫存清單中也有記錄到這個瓶子曾擺放在家中的飯廳。