The first with "garlic-bulb" mouth, slender ringed neck, on a compressed bulbous body, decorated with flowers and butterflies against a speckled light green ground; the second with cupped lip, wide, slightly waisted neck, swelling body tapering to the flared foot, decorated with the poet Li Bai seated, leaning on a wine jar, below three orchid blossoms.

PROVENANCE:

Property from the collection of Mr. Norman Potter, the first acquired prior to February 10, 1967; the second acquired prior to December 28, 1970
Thence by descent

NOTE:

For a mallet shaped vase with related butterfly and floret decoration on a speckled light green ground, Kangxi mark and of the period, see the example illustrated by Fang Jing Pei in "Treasures of the Chinese Scholar", New York, 1997, p. 85, fig. 77 and Fang Jing Pei, "Symbols and Rebuses in Chinese Art", Berkeley, 2004, p. 33, B.

Norman Stanley Potter (1926–1970) was a collector with wide-ranging interests who developed an eye for classical arts and built a collection of Asian art, antiquities, and early European art. Born to Polish immigrants in New York City, Potter began his self-edification in the arts during his youth while exploring the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As a prominent mathematician and engineer, he participated in the Manhattan Project and later was a designer of complex defense systems. Together with his wife, the abstract artist Berne Potter, he was active in the art and antique worlds of New York and became friends with important gallerists and collectors, including Julius Carlebach and Melvin Gutman of Cole Galleries, Ltd., New York.