A fine and rare blue and white 'Hundred Boys' dish. Jiajing mark and period. Photo Sotheby's

of saucer form with rounded sides, painted on the interior with a central medallion of four boys playing in a garden, three observing archaic style vessels, a fourth boy standing with a cup in his hands, the exterior painted with four pairs of boys at play, interspersed with rockwork, pine trees and a plantain tree. Diameter 6 1/8 in., 15.6 cm. Estimate 85,000-95,000 USD

PROVENANCE: Mathias Komor, New York, December 1951.

Collection of Myron S. Falk, Jr., no. 255.

Christie's New York, 20th September 2001, lot 141.

EXHIBITED: The Art of China's Children, China House Gallery, China Institute in America, New York, 1991.

NOTE: A very similar dish from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was included in the exhibition, Ming Porcelains. A Retrospective, China House Gallery, China Institute in America, New York, 1970, p. 71, cat. no. 43.

Compare also another dish, formerly in the Holger Lauritzen Collection and now in the Museum of Far EasternCompare also another  Antiquities, Stockholm, illustrated by Jan Wirgin in, "Ming Wares in the Lauritzen Collection", B.M.F.E.A., 1965, p. 210, no. 22, pl. 13.

Sotheby's. Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art. New York. 14 september 2011 www.sothebys.com