A LARGE POWDER-BLUE AND GILT PUNCH BOWL Qianlong period, circa 1750 the exterior with a brilliant thick powder-blue glaze that pools neatly above the biscuit foot rim and painted in rich gilding with four equally spaced large peony flowerheads with smaller flowering buds beneath a wide trellis cell-pattern band at the rim, the interior painted in iron-red and gilt with a full-faced chrysanthemum flowerhead to the center within a single gilt circle, the interior sides otherwise plain save for a dense but delicately painted wide band of scrolling chrysanthemum, lotus and hibiscus or day lily below the rim. 13 3/4in (35cm) diam Footnotes: 乾隆時期 約1750年 為歐洲市場製藍地描金潘趣酒碗 Published Cohen & Cohen, Baroque & Roll, Antwerp, 2015, p. 12, no. 6 出版： 倫敦Cohen & Cohen古董行，《Baroque & Roll》，安特衛普，2015年，頁12，圖版編號6 Although there is nothing in its surface decoration to distinguish this bowl as being a form specifically made for the European market, it is the unusually large size which essentially identifies it as not being an object for the Chinese market, since it has no function in polite Chinese society. Chinese entertaining does not involve the provision of large vessels full of alcoholic hot drinks; the only hot drink to be served communally in China would probably have been tea, and this was never served in anything but smaller vessels like a teapot (for leaf tea) or smallish bowl (for whisked tea). Conversely, the huge Western demand for hot spiced wine served in large bowls to the members of convivial social clubs, in private homes and at other centers of entertainment is well recorded in many European prints of the period. The prints of William Hogarth's genre scenes, and James Gilray's superbly satirical political cartoons, are the best known in England, the probable destination for this handsome bowl. This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ¤ ¤ Without reserve