A rare blue and white 'lotus' dish. Ming dynasty, Yongle period. Photo: Courtesy Sotheby's

well potted with gently curving sides, finely painted in vivid tones of underglaze-blue with characteristic 'heaping and piling', decorated to the interior with a central medallion enclosing five large lotus blooms emitting intertwining leafy stems within triple line borders, surrounded in the cavetto by a continuous lotus meander beneath a classic scroll band at the lip, with a similar chrysanthemum scroll on the exterior between a classic scroll around the foot and a keyfret band at the rim - 28.1 cm., 11 in. - Lot Sold: 920,000 HKD

PROVENANCE: A Private Japanese Collection

NOTE: Dishes of this design but of this small size are rare. Compare dishes of similar decoration, but of slightly larger size; one in the National Palace Museum, illustrated in Mingdai chunian ciqi tezhan, Taipei, 1982, cat.no. 40; another illustrated in Chinese Arts of the Ming and Ch'ing Periods, Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, 1963, cat.no. 283; and two from the Ardabil Shrine collection, now in the Archaeological Museum, Tehran, illustrated in John Alexander Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine, Washington, D.C., 1956, pl.34; and in T. Misugi, Chinese Porcelain Collections in the Near East, Hong Kong, 1981, vol.III, no.A38. Compare also a dish of similar decoration sold in these rooms, 25th April 2004, lot 290. 

Sotheby's. Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art. 08 Oct 08. Hong Kong - www.sothebys.com