Lot 1039. A rare blue and white bowl, Xuande six-character mark in underglaze blue within a double circle and of the period (1426-1435); 17.2 cm diam., silk pouch, Japanese double wood box Estimate USD 300,000 – USD 500,000. Price Realised USD 352,800. © Christie's Images Ltd 2024

Literature: Sen Shu Tey, The Collection of Chinese Art - Special Exhibition ‘Run Through 10 Years’, Tokyo, 2006, p. 74, no. 102.

Exhibited: Osaka, Japan Ceramic Society, Osaka branch, Late Yuan and Early Ming Blue and White, 29-30 May 1967, no. 34.
Tokyo, Sen Shu Tey, The Collection of Chinese Art - Special Exhibition ‘Run Through 10 Years’, 22-23 November 2006.

Note: The porcelains of the Xuande period have always been especially admired by Chinese connoisseurs, to the extent that three hundred years later, when the Qianlong Emperor wished to compliment contemporary porcelains, he compared them to the porcelains of the Xuande and Chenghua (1465-87) reigns. The Xuande Emperor was a very enthusiastic patron of porcelain production, and the potters working at the imperial kilns were required to make an astonishingly wide range of vessel shapes, ranging from huge jars to tiny flower vases for the cages of song birds. It is especially the blue and white porcelains of the Xuande reign that are considered masterpieces of the potters' art. The underglaze blue designs of the period are admired both for the color of the cobalt blue and for the vitality of the painting, which exhibits great spontaneity and fluency, as evidenced by the elegant flower scrolls on the current bowl.

The current bowl is finely decorated around the exterior with a continuous design of scrolling stylized lotus blossoms, while the interior is decorated in the cavetto with five flowers (pomegranate, lotus, tree peony, chrysanthemum, and hollyhock) with continuous scrolling foliage encircling a central lotus spray within a double ring. Each of the flowers would have conveyed a particular meaning to those who saw the bowl – the pomegranate offering joy and protection with its flowers and implying the provision of many sons through its (unseen) fruit; the lotus for harmony, beauty and purity; the peony for wealth and honor; the chrysanthemum for longevity and wealth; and the hollyhock for fertility and perseverance.

For a Xuande-marked bowl of similar size and design in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, see Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, pp. 322-3, no. 134. Other examples include the bowl in the British Museum, London, illustrated by Jessica Harrison-Hall in Ming Ceramics, London, 2001, p. 133, no. 4:25, and the bowl from the Tianminlou Collection illustrated in Chinese Porcelain: The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, part 1, Hong Kong, 1987, no. 22, and subsequently sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 3 April 2019, lot 10.