A rare blue and white barbed floral dish. Ming dynasty, Yongle period
A rare blue and white barbed floral dish. Ming dynasty, Yongle period. Photo: Courtesy Sotheby's
painted in deep purplish-blue shades of cobalt with 'heaping and piling' effect, centred with a meandering spray consisting of five different floral blooms surrounding a peony, enclosed by twelve further blooming sprigs around the well with each strategically placed within a lobe, the everted barbed rim with a simple lingzhi scroll, all within bracket-shaped double borders, the exterior repeating the twelve flower sprigs surrounding the well above the wedge-cut foot, the unglazed smooth base burnt a pale buff colour in the firing - 38cm., 15in. - Lot Sold: 2,180,000 HKD
PROVENANCE: Bluett & Son, London, 1990.
NOTE: Yongle dishes of this form and design can be found in important museums and private collections worldwide. A very similar large dish, in the British Museum, London, is illustrated in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics, London, 2001, p. 116, pl. 3:35, where another large dish of this shape but different decoration excavated in the Yongle stratum at Dongmentou, Zhushan, Jingdezhen, is mentioned. See another dish of this size and design in Taiwan, included in Porcelain of the National Palace Museum. Blue-and-White Ware of the Ming Dynasty, vol. 1, Hong Kong, 1963, pls. 22 and 22a; one, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, included in Ming chu qinghua ci, Beijing, 2002, pl. 134; one published in John Alexander Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine, Washington, 1956, pl. 35; and one, formerly in the collection of Dr. Frederik Wahlgen and later the Lindberg collection, included in the exhibition Ming Blue-and-White, Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, 1964, p. 18, cat.no. 36, was sold in these rooms, 28th November 1978, lot 66.
In further Asian collections, see a dish published in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol.2, London, 1994, pl. 663; one included in the exhibition Chinese Porcelain. The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, part 1, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1987, cat.no. 6; and one formerly in the Toguri Museum of Art, Tokyo, sold in our London rooms, 9th June 2004, lot 19.
Compare a dish from the Morrill collection sold at Doyle's New York, 16th September 2003, lot 82; one sold in these rooms
Sotheby's. Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art. 08 Oct 08. Hong Kong - www.sothebys.com