HONG KONG.- On 30 November, Bonhams Hong Kong will present GANBEI: A Toast to the Chinese Wine Culture, a themed auction showcasing more than 40 pieces of Chinese works of art connected to drinking and wine culture over the past 3,000 years. They span dynasties from Shang, Spring and Autumn, Warring States, Western Han, Tang, to Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing. All items will be exhibited to the public from 21 to 29 November, an opportunity for everyone to trace the development of the wine culture as a form of art throughout Chinese history.

How wine, now considered one of the earliest forms of material civilisation, came about seems to be a bit of a coincidence: food was soaked with water by accident and with time, alcohol was naturally produced. Consuming the alcoholic food sent our earliest predecessors to a state of tipsiness like nothing they had ever experienced – they believed it was an otherworldly track to come closer to the divinity. This may explain why priests are among the earliest group of people who drank wine copiously, before this activity gained popularity among the nobility, the scholar-officials and then the public. With time, objects related to the drinking culture have also evolved in craftsmanship and function, from the dignified designs for ceremonies to the elaborate style adorned with precious material accessible only to the noblemen, and further on to a boom in artistic expression sought after by the literati. Through Chinese history, wine has gone beyond the material to become an indispensable vehicle connecting the social, the art, the culture and more.

Not many underglaze-blue and copper-red dragon moonflasks produced during Qianlong’s reign were lucky enough to survive in history, and their colour-glazed counterparts are even harder to come by. Amongst all colours, to find one in the arresting turquoise glaze is almost an impossible task of all, for there are no more than two examples known to exist to date. One of them, which sports a distinct lime-green underside, will now be offered as a star lot at Bonhams Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art sale on 30 November in Hong Kong. The exceptionally rare Liddell Moonflask from the prestigious Huaihaitang collection（懷海堂） from Hong Kong carries an estimate of HK$18,000,000-25,000,000.




The name ‘moonflask’, or baoyueping, meaning ‘embracing the moon’, is inspired by its flat-sided but full-bodied form which resembles a full moon. The moonflask has a long history dating back to the Song and Yuan Dynasties, when ceramic flasks of a similar shape would be tied to the side of a horse saddle. During the Ming era, it evolved into a highly decorative ware, the style of which was later reproduced during the Kangxi and Yongzheng periods. But it wasn’t until the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, who admired styles from the past, when the moonflask regained dominance. New shapes and styles were invented as the Imperial kiln experimented with new firing approaches, building a legacy of not just underglaze-blue and copper-red moonflasks, but also a handful of coloured-glazed (such as yellow and lime-green) examples. Among them, the colour turquoise is the rarest of all.

The smooth white body of the Liddell Moonflask is perfectly formed in a softly flattened shape of a full moon, complemented by the delicate handles and perfectly proportioned neck and foot, to the strongly delineated deep copper-red five-clawed dragon emerging from dramatically rolling and splashing waves. The technical perfection of the painting, enamelling and control of the turquoise glaze during firing, all bear hallmarks of the pinnacle of porcelain making during the reign of Qianlong, as famously supervised by Tang Ying in the Imperial kiln in Jingdezhen.

The Moonflask was originally acquired by Captain Charles Oswald Liddell in China, where he lived and conducted business from 1877-1913. For nearly four decades, Liddell had formed his collection by purchasing mostly from two significant sources: the collection of Prince Chun, the last Regent of the Qing Dynasty; and from the collection of the private secretary and adviser to statesman Li Hong Zhang. Liddell, who had a discerning eye, understood from early on the distinction between the extraordinary Imperial porcelain and the export Chinese wares decorating the interior of many great English country houses at the time. His collection, which was then carried back to the UK and exhibited, was highly regarded as one of the earliest English collections to represent a true ‘Chinese taste’.

Gigi Yu, Bonhams Head of Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, commented: “The Liddell Moonflask encapsulates the consummate achievements in porcelain production during the Qianlong period, but what makes it truly exceptional is how rarely it comes to the market – it was ten years ago the last time it appeared at auction, a beautiful occasion which I was honoured to be part of. Completely unseen throughout the past decade, this can perhaps be quite fittingly called a once-in- a-blue-moon flask for collectors, and now it is our pleasure to offer it once again.”