A BLUE AND WHITE CIRCULAR BRUSH AND INK STAND

Chang ming fu gui mark, late 16th century

Footnotes

明十六世紀晚期 青花五孔筆插
「長命富貴」款

Provenance: S.Marchant & Son, London, 24 May 1966
John Burke da Silva (1918-2003)
Sotheby's London, 10 November 2004, lot 591

Exhibited: Oriental Ceramic Society, The Chinese Scholars Desk, 17th to 18th Century, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1979, no.46.
Oriental Ceramic Society, Research Display of Chinese Sixteenth Century Ceramics, British Museum, London, 1994, no.44 (illustrated p.6)

Published: John da Silva, 'Three Types of Chinese Brush Stand', Oriental Art, vol.XXIV, no.3, Autumn 1978, p.326, fig.2.
S.Marsh, Brushpots: A Collector's View, Hong Kong, 2020, pp.22-24, figs.2-3

來源：倫敦古董商 S.Marchant & Son，1966年5月24日
John Burke da Silva (1918-2003)
蘇富比倫敦，2004年11月10日，拍品591號

展覽：東方瓷器協會，《The Chinese Scholars Desk, 17th to 18th Century》，阿什莫林博物館，牛津，1979年，編號46
東方瓷器協會， 《Brushpots: A collector's view》，大英博物館，倫敦，1994年，編號44（圖版頁6）

錄著： John da Silva, 'Three Types of Chinese Brush Stand'，《Oriental Art》，第24卷，編號3號，1978年秋季，頁326，插圖2號
S.Marsh, 《Brushpots: A collector's view》，香港，2020，頁22-24，插圖2-3號

John da Silva was born in the United States of a Portuguese father and American mother, whose parents had come to America from France in the middle of the 19th century and founded a chocolate factory in San Francisco. After the Second World War he joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The job took him to many parts of the world. His love of Chinese porcelain stemmed from a posting to the Embassy in Rome in 1954, where he happened to stay in a rented flat that housed a large collection of Chinese and Japanese works of art. He regularly purchased Chinese works of art from auction houses in London in the 1960's. He Joined the Oriental Ceramics Society in 1960, serving on the Council from 1977-1980 and from 1984-1987 and as Honorary Treasurer from 1992-1994.

The use of this vessel is clarified by a painting of the famous philosopher Wang Yangming (1472-1529) seated at his writing desk which illustrates a handscroll of his letters and other related material. The piece is shown on his desk with three brushes placed, tips upwards, in it, together with a small vase of flowers, an inkstone and a water dropper or paper weight. The natural assumption is that the rectangular section is to hold an inkstick, which is confirmed by the late Ming scholar Wen Zhenheng, who in Zhang wu zhi ('A Treatise on Superfluous Things') under the heading of brushpots wrote:

'...there are also drum-shaped ones with holes in them for inserting brushes and ink.'

See a similar blue and white brush and ink stand, Jiajing, illustrated by G.Tsang and H.Moss, Arts from the Scholar's Studio, Hong Kong, 1986, pp.226-227, no.212. See also another similar blue and white brush and ink stand, 16th century, in the Percival David collection in the British Museum (acc.no.PDF,B.605). Compare also with a similar blue and white vessel, but decorated with fish, Jiajing, illustrated in Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (II): The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 2000, no.114.