Kangxi period, 1662–1722
China

height: 25 cm

The animals are decorated with colourful enamels on the biscuit (or unglazed porcelain), and paired as the same model twice over. They sit on their haunches upon oval bases, their heads turned slightly to the left and looking up with open mouths that reveal pointed teeth and curling tongues. Individual spiral curls frame each jaw and descend from the head down the spine to the curling tail – the tufts placed above the multi-coloured painted mane; the bodies are washed in a light green with iron red flames rising up each leg.

This pair of lions are modelled on Japanese originals and thus do not conform to the standard Chinese type (as seen in the previous example of a famille verte Buddhist lion and cub). The Chinese acted as agents for the Japanese – selling their porcelain wares to both the export market and within China – even after the Jingdezhen kilns were reconstructed in 1683. The popularity of kakiemon porcelain in Europe encouraged the Chinese to model and decorate some of their porcelain in this style. Thus we have a Japanese model with the addition of some Chinese features, such as the curling spirals, bulging eyes and ‘king’ character on the forehead – and decorated in the kakiemon palette, in famille verte enamels. Interestingly, Japanese porcelain pairs of animals tended to be represented as the same model twice – rather than mirror images of each other – as seen, for example, in the pair of tigers in the Copeland Collection at The Peabody Museum in Salem; these two Kangxi lions, made as a pair, also follow that tradition.

similar example
‘Christie’s Pictorial History of Chinese Ceramics’, Du Boulay, Oxford, Christie’s 1984, no.1 – page 294.