The cockerel is standing on a pierced rockwork base, his head slightly turned to the right. The figure is enamelled on the biscuit with plumage markings in black on an aubergine ground. His tail and wing feathers are in green, yellow and iron-red, while the base is splashed in green, yellow and aubergine.

This is one of the more impressive figures of birds made in the late Kangxi period for the European market, and is of the type bought by the very rich in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, there are a pair of similar figures in the Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon (R.J. Charleston and John Ayers, Meissen and other European Porcelain & Oriental Porcelain (London, 1972), pl. 71).

The Asil game cockerel is the oldest pure-bred domestic chicken. Its cockscomb is a pun for guan or the hat of an official, and is therefore associated with wishes for advancement in the civil service. He is used for oaths and sacrifices and is not to be killed on ordinary occasions. He is the tenth symbolic animal of the twelve terrestrial branches of the Chinese zodiac.

Literature: Anthony du Boulay, The Duberly Collection of Chinese Art at Winchester College (Winchester, 2019), p. 82; Anthony du Boulay, Chinese Porcelain (London, 1963), fig. 70; Victor Reinacker, ‘Fantasies of Chinese Ceramic Art’, in the Country Life Annual (London, 1956), p. 59

Exhibited: Oriental Ceramic Society, London, 2000 Years of Ceramic Figures, 1947, no. 90

Provenance: Bequeathed as part of the Duberly Collection, 1978; purchased by Major Montagu and Lady Eileen Duberly from John Sparks, 7 June 1961 (£900); formerly in the collections of the Hon. Mrs Basil Ionides, Sotheby’s and of C.T. Loo

Location: Treasury, Gallery 2