Blue and White prunus blossom moon flask

[Stan]

Thanks Bokaba for the pictures, good examples, the blue on my moon flask is a little lighter that the one shown at met, but I do have Kangxi authenticated items with the same blue on my flask, and one item I have that is marked Kangxi that also has the same blue but it has not been authenticated yet.

[peterp]

Stan, let us see what they say.

However, and unrelated to this, I would be careful with relying too much on the hue of blue with Qing porcelain for dating. There are much too many variations throughout the dynasty. The only ones that may be relevant for dating maybe the late Qing one using chemical blue, and, the other one is a specific blue existing during a period of about 20 years of the Kangxi reign, and then it disappeared for an unknown reason. I do not think you would find that on this type pf porcelain, though.

Many of the blue pigments were mixed with others, resulting in a variety of color tones that makes it difficult to distinguish what is what. If it were that simple, we could just use a color identification set like this one: www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_colornames.asp. Then we would know where or when something is from. I am yet to hear of a research looking into this aspect of blue-and-whites.

Blue pigments were mined locally, in China, during the Qing dynasty, and there are at least four different sources, each providing a different hue of blue. They were also mixed.
Thus, apart from the above mentioned two types, none allow for dating, and often two or more types were used at any one time. In the Qing dynasty there were at least several hundred kilns operating at any one time in Jingdezhen, this not including other kilns like Dehua, for example.

(The above concerns the Qing dynasty. The blue pigments of the Ming dynasty are a different matter.)

[Stan]

Thanks Peter, good information, I will try not to get caught up in the blue's for dating, but use it as one possible clue.