This cup is enamelled in iron-red and blue with touches of pink, with flowering and fruiting pomegranates with brown branches and green leaves. The reverse has a ten character inscription, the interior with a white enamel flowerhead.

The poem can be translated “The dewlike sheen of the pearl curtain is dazzling, / A fragrant haze powders the Imperial screen”.

The red seal “Shan” means mountain, while the seal mark underneath refers to an early 19th century potter Xie of the bamboo wall. Xie also refers to a valley in the Kunlun Mountains where Ling Lun, Minister to the fabulous Emperor Huangdi, is said to have cut bamboo tubes of different lengths and thereby invented the musical scale.

Literature: Anthony du Boulay, The Duberly Collection of Chinese Art at Winchester College (Winchester, 2019), p. 106

Provenance: Bequeathed as part of the Duberly Collection, 1978; purchased by Major Montagu and Lady Eileen Duberly from H.R.N. Norton, 16 February 1951 (£9)

Location: Not on display