Lot 191.  A green-enameled 'dragon' dish, Mark and period of Hongzhi (1488-1505). Diameter 17.8 cm, Lot sold 50,800 USD (Estimate 30,000 - 50,000 USD). © Sotheby's 2024

the base with a six-character mark in underglaze blue within a double circle, Japanese wood box (3)

Provenance : The Baoyizhai Collection.

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 8th April 2014, lot 3029.

Note: Dishes decorated with sinuous dragons enameled in green against a white ground originated in the Chenghua period (1465-1487), but increased in popularity in the succeeding Hongzhi (1488-1505) and Zhengde (1506-1521) reigns. While Chenghua prototypes are also known with the dragons enameled over the glaze, later examples, such as this dish, were almost all enameled over the biscuit. The dishes were first incised and the dragon silhouettes reserved in the biscuit during firing and then filled with green enamel for a second firing.

Four Hongzhi mark and period dishes of this design and size, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, are illustrated in Imperial Porcelains from the Reign of Hongzhi and Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty, Beijing, 2017, pls 53 and 56-58, together with two slightly larger dishes, pls 54 and 55; a dish from the collection of Sir John Addis, now in the British Museum, London, is illustrated in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, pl. 7:17; and another in the Meiyintang Collection is illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. 2, London, 1994, pl. 693. Further examples were sold at auction, for example, a dish from the collections of Mr and Mrs R.H.R. Palmer and Roger Pilkington, sold in our London rooms in 1962, and again in our Hong Kong rooms, 6th April 2016, lot 30; and another from a Japanese Private Collection, sold in these rooms, 11th September 2019, lot 519.

Sotheby's. Chinese Art, New York, 19 March 2024