A RARE PAIR OF LARGE FAMILLE ROSE 'MANDARIN-PATTERN' LOBED FLARING BOUGH POTS AND LINERS Qianlong period, circa 1780 Both deep vessels of oval section and enameled on the two main faces and smaller side panels with large vertical panels depicting figures on pavilion terraces and genre scenes of a high-ranking figure surrounded by family, attendants and a guardian lion in wide landscapes, all between underglaze-blue borders painted with floral clusters beneath the top rims and around the domed spreading feet, the inset flat tops pierced with holes for large sprays of flowers and set with two upright loop handles. 14 1/4in (36cm) high (2). Footnotes: 乾隆時期 約1780年 罕見青花粉彩開光《人物故事》雙耳奢口帶膽大件花插一對 Published Cohen & Cohen, Tyger Tyger!, Antwerp, 2016, pp. 70-71, no. 31 出版： 倫敦Cohen & Cohen古董行，《Tyger Tyger!》，安特衛普，2016年，頁70-71，圖版編號31 Large vessels boldly enameled in this thickly decorated type of design began to arrive in Europe from China in about 1770, and proved popular both with Western European buyers and in East-Coast North America. It seems that the English East India Company, retaining its monopoly of shipping Asian items through its English entrepot ports to the US East Coast until the 1770s, had not deemed it commercially worthwhile to ship massive earlier famille rose decorative vases and dishes to potential buyers in colonial Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. Vases in these cluttered but striking types of very popular design are still to be found in late 18th century East Coast homes, where they may have remained since they first arrived often through the independent China traders who began to trade directly with Canton after February 1784, when the 'Empress of China' began her historic maiden voyage direct to Canton from New Yok harbor. In some ways they mark the final flickering of the charming rococo taste for whimsical, imaginary 'Chinoiserie' scenes of bucolic Chinese in unlikely pastoral settings, which had dominated the Western European imagination for nearly a century until a more serious, drier taste for Neo-Classical ornamentation and design came to supplant it.