This is really the classic fancy of a sotheby’s specialist, my colleague in Paris one day gets a phone call from a lady telling him she has this vase that has been sitting in an attic for a couple of decades and she would like to bring it in. She took it on the train in a shoe box and walked over to the office.
There it came out of the box, one of the finest most dazzling pieces of family rose porcelain he had ever seen, And it turns out this is a seal mark of the Qianlong emperor, the most powerful human being who lived on earth in the 18th century. It is a vase that was probably made for his birthday on the 34th year of his reign and decorated with a great wealth of auspicious designs from pine trees that signified longevity to Lou the deer which is happiness to the cranes that are our wish for old age.
What’s exceptional I would say on this vase is the quality of the firing, it must have been positioned just right in the kiln and fired for the right amount of time because the colors have come out pin sharp so you have that gem light dazzling appearance that you do not often see, in its shape and design it’s a unique vase and it’s very closely related to one of the most famous pieces in a public collection in France.
