A fine and rare blue and white 'dice' bowl. Yongzheng six-character mark in a line below the rim and of  the period. Photo Bonhams

Sturdily potted with rounded sides on a short foot and painted on the exterior in varying tones to simulate 'heaping and piling' with a band of flowering lotus scroll amidst curling leaves in the Ming style, above a band of S-shaped scrolls at the foot and below crested waves at the rim enclosing a panel containing the six-character mark. 29.2cm (11½in) diam. Estimate: £40,000 - 60,000, CNY 400,000 - 590,000, HK$ 480,000 - 720,000.

Provenance: Sotheby's London, 19 June 2002, lot 57
The Inder Rieden Collection

The design of the present bowl has been inspired by early Ming Dynasty Xuande-period thickly-potted 'dice' bowls, such as those illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Blue and White porcelain with Underglaze Red (I), Hong Kong, Catalogue nos.144-148 (variously painted with scrolls of pomegranate, peony, lotus, Buddhist Emblems and lingzhi).

A similar bowl, Yongzheng mark and of the period, formerly in the T.Y.Chao and T.T.Tsui Collections, was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 27 May 2008, lot 24A. For another see Sotheby's New York, 23 March 2011, lot 735.

Bonhams. Fine Chinese Art, 10 Nov 2011, New Bond Street www.bonhams.com