Limited Masterworks Vase Fortune Dragon

Mythology was omnipresent in all spheres of life in ancient China, the design of coins being no exception: round on the outside with a square hole in the middle, they represented the Earth surrounded by the sky.

The Chinese porcelain artist Zhuoyu Hou took the unusual shape and significance of such coins as a source of inspiration for the fashioning of her latest creation, her Nova vase. A rectangular base mutates into a chunky belly that in turn makes way for a circular mouth. Out-of-the-ordinary, organic, flowing shapes of this kind are a trademark of an artist who has been working in the manufactory's studios since 2016.

Hou likewise stuck with the symbolism of her home country for her decoration. Surrounded by clouds, a lucky dragon plays, looking at a fire pearl. Traditional MEISSEN techniques fuse with motifs from Chinese culture in these exactingly painted creatures of fable. The dragons have been painted with a variety of preparations of gold whilst the clouds were created adopting the highly specialised technique of Limoges painting whereby paint was applied to the vase's black body in several layers.

Zhuoyu Hou is constantly expanding the manufactory's repertoire with the unique new formal idiom embodied by sculptures and receptacles such as the present vase.