Lot 6. The Au Bak Ling Collection. An incised green-enamelled 'dragon' dish, Zhengde six-character mark in underglaze blue within a double circle and of the period (1506-1521); 17.5 cm diam. Price realised HKD 2,016,000 (Estimate HKD 600,000-800,000). © Christie's Images Ltd 2024.

The dish is decorated with a five-clawed dragon among clouds and flames to the interior, the eyes, mouth, horns and scales incised in the biscuit, and covered with a bright leaf-green enamel, and two further green striding dragons on the exterior, reserved against an incised ground of waves crashing against rocks under a transparent glaze.

Provenance: Sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 22 May 1986, lot 214

Note: Green-dragon dishes of this design are based on Zhengtong-Tianshun period prototypes. Compare to two incised green enamel ‘dragon’ dishes from the Zhengtong-Tianshun period, discovered at the Jingdezhen Imperial kiln site, illustrated in Lustre Revealed: Jingdezhen Porcelain Wares in Mid Fifteenth Century China, Shanghai, 2019, nos. 161-162. Compare also a Chenghua marked bowl decorated with green dragons enamelled over biscuit silhouettes, illustrated in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Ch’eng-hua Porcelain Ware, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2003, cat. no. 110.

It is very rare to find Zhengde green dragon dishes in this small size, as extent examples exceed 17.5 cm. in diameter.Compare to a larger dish in the Qing court collection (19.9 cm.), illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Miscellaneous Enamelled Porcelains Plain Tricoloured Porcelains, Shanghai, 2009, no. 71; another Zhengde dish (18 cm.) in the British Museum Collection, illustrated by Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, no. 8:34; and a further example of similar size in the Shanghai Museum Collection (17.5 cm.), illustrated by Lu Minghua, Shanghai bowuguan cangpin yanjiu daxi, Mingdai guanyao ciqi, Shanghai, 2007, no. 1-44.

Christie's. The Au Bak Ling Collection: The Inaugural Sale, Hong Kong, 26 September 2024