Champlevé enamel bowl on stand

A copper bowl, the rounded sides rising from a tapered foot and terminating in a flat everted rim. The sides are decorated in champlevé enamel with four quatrefoil panels, each containing a stylised lotus flower in pink and turquoise enamels on a gold ground. The panels are separated by leaf-shaped ornament on a turquoise ground. The foot and flat rim are engraved with floral meanders and diaper pattern. The separate base is of pedestal form and itself supported on six small feet. The recessed openwork central section is decorated with lotus flowers in red enamel. The foot has a row of formal lotus panels in turquoise and lapis enamels with a row of lingzhi heads just above it.

•  It is likely that this small bowl on stand originally contained a hardstone miniature landscape or tree. Various examples of these miniature landscapes, in their original cloisonné or painted enamel jardinières, are known to have been sent as tribute gift to the Qianlong Emperor from Guangdong province in the 18th century.1 Of the three main enamelling techniques: cloisonné, painting and champlevé enamel, the latter is the least common, as well as the most labour intensive. It involves laboriously carving or hammering shallow cells into the metal, which are then filled with vitreous enamel. A Qianlong mark and period enamel double vase decorated in this technique with a design of similar stylised lotus flowers is in the Pierre Uldry Collection.2

1 Boda, Y. Tributes from Guangdong to the Qing Court, the Palace museum and the Art Gallery of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1987, 58-60, p. 90
2 Brinker, H.and Lutz, A Chinese Cloisonné, the Pierre Uldry Collection Asia Society Galleries, New York, 1989, no.304