Vase with floral scrolls

This vase is emblematic of the flamboyance and technical accomplishments of ceramics produced during the reign of China’s Qianlong emperor (1736–95). Its innovative color palette—called famille rose (“pink family”) in Western scholarship and yangcai (“Western colors”) or falangcai (“enamel colors”) in Chinese—was achieved with colloidal gold and a lead-arsenic tinting agent; both were introduced from Europe in the 1720s. The design is remarkable for its association with textile patterning, specifically to Rococo aesthetics popular in Europe during the eighteenth century. The incised pattern on the vase’s ground has been identified by Chinese scholars as “brocade ground” (jin di) and the floral design as “adding flowers on brocade” (jin shang tian hua), suggesting the vase resembles a sumptuous brocaded silk with embroidered flowers.34 Other visual similarities to Rococo textiles include a palette of pastel colors, primacy of sinuous lines, and asymmetrical floral elements.