A RARE Chinese Doucai porcelain “narcissus” month cup. The c - Lot 49

A RARE Chinese Doucai porcelain “narcissus” month cup. The cup is finely enameled down its deep, flaring sides with clusters of “narcissi” growing beside blue ornamental rocks, symbolic of the eleventh month of the calendar year. Month cups depicting seasonal flowers are a classic design of the Kangxi period. Very delicately crafted, they are painted in the traditional wucai palette of underglaze blue and overglaze enamels, which was developed during the Ming dynasty but rarely used in the Qing dynasty, when the underglaze color was generally omitted. On these month cups, the designs are generally sketched on the unglazed porcelain in a faint underglaze blue. Slight differences in size, colors, writing styles, and marks between individual cups and across different months suggest that even these cups may not have been produced as sets of twelve, but perhaps issued consecutively as the year progressed, to be assembled at the end. With a 6-character “Xuantong” mark in underglaze blue on the base, 20th century. D: 6.2 cm, H: 5 cm. Very good condition, one tiny chip on the foot rim. (UV-checked).