Bowl with peacock in falangcai painted enamels, Qing dynasty, Yongzheng reign 1723-1736

Bowl with peacock in falangcai painted enamels, Qing dynasty, Yongzheng reign 1723-1736

• Image Number: K1B013983N000000000PAB
• Dynasty: Qing dynasty
• Category: Ceramics
• Function: Container
• Material: Minerals/Ceramics/
• Description:
  The bowl has a wide mouth, a deep arc wall, a flat bottom and a short circle of feet. The outer side of the bowl is painted with peacocks, ribbons, magpies, crabapples, bamboo stones and magnolias. Because the combination of magnolia and begonia has the homonym of “Jade Hall”, while the ribbon bird represents longevity, the peacock represents auspiciousness, and the magpie represents joy, the whole decorative pattern has the symbolic meaning of “Jade Hall Celebration”. On the other side of the bowl was inscribed in ink, “Shake the golden green tail, and dance in the shade of the jade pond.”. These two lines are from the Peacock by Wu Yuanheng, a poet of the Tang Dynasty. At the end of the poem, three seals of “political transformation”, “peace” and “prosperity” are depicted in red materials, which convey the motif in the painting as a symbol of the peaceful and prosperous times. The inside of the bowl is plain with no grain. The bottom of the bowl is made of two lines of Song typeface in a blue book, “made in Yongzheng’s year”, with two side frames.