This oviform jar with its flat straight-sided cover is decorated with flowering peonies, magnolia and wild crab apple trees, all growing from strangely shaped Taihu-rocks. The rocks are outlined by wide dark rims emphasised by strokes encircling light-washed areas. The cover is again decorated in the same fashion as the body – with flowering peonies, magnolia and insects. The base is glazed. Height including cover 24 cm
The Avalon Collection. This collection, which in the main focuses on the Interregnum and Kangxi periods
has been both carefully and sensitively formed over the last twenty-five years. The collector, a member of the English Oriental Ceramic Society, has assembled the collection with an eye for provenance whilst purchasing from old European collections, well-established antique dealers and at auction. Academically, the pieces have been well researched both in terms of their symbolism and narrative themes. In many instances the imagery on the pieces has been referenced to episodes in the romantic and historic novels of Chinese mythology, which were used extensively in the decoration of seventeenth century Chinese porcelain.