A VERY FINE AND LARGE FAMILLE ROSE BLACK-GROUND 'CONFRONTED COCKERELS' FIVE-PIECE GARNITURE Yongzheng-early Qianlong, 1730-1740 The superbly enameled garniture comprising three oviform jars and covers and two beaker vases, each decorated in dark famille rose enamels with various reserve panels set against colorfully decorated scrolling chrysanthemum green-foliage black ground, the largest panels on either side of melon-shape and painted with two cockerels standing on rockwork amidst flowering peony with a butterfly above, the smaller reserve panels of fan and scroll-painting shape, painted with birds and flowers, the domed covers similarly enameled and with large bud finials. the tallest: 17in (43.5cm) high (5). Footnotes: 雍正至乾隆早期 約1730-1740年 粉彩黑地開光《鬥鷄》飾瓶一套五件 Published Cohen & Cohen, Baroque & Roll, Antwerp, 2015, pp. 58-59, no. 39 出版： 倫敦Cohen & Cohen古董行，《Baroque & Roll》，安特衛普，2015年，頁58-59，圖版編號39 See the footnote to lot 34 for a discussion of the invention and significance of 'black' enameled wares in the context of the demand for Chinese export ceramics, both the early-18th newly imported wares and when these antiques became hugely in demand again in the later 19th century. Black enamel decoration is most often found on smaller sized vases, teapots and table wares made during the later decades of the Kangxi period (1662-1722); it unusual to find this rarest and most desirable of all Kangxi-period enamel color very successfully paired with and brilliantly complementing the finest new innovatory 'pink' palette widely used for the first time during the subsequent reign, that of the porcelain-obsessed Emperor Yongzheng (1723-1735). References: Cohen & Cohen, 2012, no. 12, p. 18 for a larger pair of vases with similar decoration; and Williamson, 1974, plate LIV, for famille rose display jars of similar shape and decoration which were particularly in fashion with, and feverishly competed for by, top European collectors when he was writing his important and innovatory study of Chinese enameled designs.