A rare incised barbed white-glazed dish. Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period. Photo: Courtesy Sotheby's

finely potted, supported on a wide low-wedge-shaped foot enclosing the unglazed base, the sides modelled into lobes echoing the barbed everted rim, the interior finely incised in the centre with a flowering peony tree enclosed within a barbed double line, the well with separate floral sprigs corresponding to each lobe and the rim with lingzhi sprigs, the exterior similarly decorated with floral sprigs on each lobe, applied with a bright translucent white glaze pooling in the incised lines to a slightly darker tone highlighting the decoration - 19.5cm., 7 5/8 in. - Lot Sold: 800,000 HKD

PROVENANCE: Sotheby's London, 8th December 1992, lot 236

NOTE: Two Yongle dishes of this type with similar incised decoration, but with a central rose branch, were sold in these rooms, 1^st November 1999, lot 326, and 29^th October 2001, lot 559. Similar dishes with incised grapes are in the Asia Society, New York, from the John D. Rockefeller 3^rd collection, illustrated in Denise Patry Leidy, Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society's Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3^rd Collection, New York, 1994, pl. 168; and in the Museum of Far eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, published in Jan Wirgin, Chinese Ceramics from the Axel and Nora Lundgren Bequest, Stockholm, 1978, pl. 34; and a third dish from the Carl Kempe collection was sold in our Paris rooms, 12^th June 2008, lot 33.

A fragmentrary white dish of this form but without incised decoration, excavated from the early Yongle stratum of the Ming imperial kiln site, was included in the exhibition Imperial Porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande Periods Excavated from the Site of the Ming Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1989, cat. no. 23. The exquisite quality of the porcelain with a 'sweet white' (tianbai) glaze was highly valued by both the Ming and Qing dynasty courts, when at the end of the Kangxi reign a dish of this type was transferred to the Imperial Palace workshops to be enamelled. This polychrome painted dish, now preserved in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, was included together with a plain white piece with incised camellia design in the Museum's Special Exhibition of Ch'ing Dynasty Enamelled Porcelains of the Imperial Ateliers, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1992, cat. nos 1 and 2.

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