A pair of slender, ovoid porcelain vases each with short neck and overfitting, high, domed cover. Painted in famille verte enamels round the sides, in four quatrefoil panels framed in iron-red, are formalised flowers; on the shoulder, a band of pendent lappets with red blooms and leaves; and above, a lotus-scroll border in white reserve on red. The cover is painted to match.

The so-called famille verte style of decoration was developed during the seventeenth century employing the wucai (five-colour) enamels of the preceding Ming dynasty, often in association with underglaze blue. Its use during the reign of Shunzhi (1644–61) was followed by the emergence of a more refined palette in which green was more prominent and a blue enamel increasingly replaced the underglaze pigment, with a finer style of drawing and a pleasing transparency in the colours. The style is mainly associated with the reign of the Kangxi emperor (1662–1722). Thereafter, it was rapidly superseded, as the softer, more opaque tints of the famille rose became available.

Text adapted from Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen: Volume I.