Lot 43. A rare brown-decorated 'gardenia' dish; Mark and period of Zhengde (1506-1521); 25.5 cm., 10 in. Estimate 700,000-900,000 HKD. Lot sold 1,040,000 HKD. Photo Sotheby's

with rounded sides and a flared rim rising from a tapering foot, the interior decorated in iron-brown glaze with a gardenia spray bearing two blooms and two buds, the cavetto painted with sprays of grape vine, lotus, pomegranate and crab apple, the exterior with a continuous rose scroll, all with details picked out in carefully incised lines and set against the transparent glaze, the slightly convex base inscribed with a six-character reign mark within a double ring

PROVENANCE: Christie's New York, 3rd December 1992, lot 277.

EXHIBITED: Evolution to Perfection. Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection/ Evolution vers la perfection. Céramiques de Chine de la Collection Meiyintang, Sporting d'Hiver, Monte Carlo, 1996, cat. no. 125.

LITTERATURE: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 2, no. 681.

NOTE: No other dish of this design and colour scheme has ever been offered at auction, but similar Zhengde (AD 1506-21) examples are in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, see Minji meihin zuroku [Illustrated catalogue of important Ming porcelains], Tokyo, 1977-8, vol. II, pl. 100; in the Yamato Bunkakan, Nara, illustrated in Yamato Bunkakan shozōhin zuhan mokuroku 7: Chūgoku tōji / Chinese Ceramics from the Museum Yamato Bunkakan Collection, Illustrated Catalogue Series no. 7, Nara, 1977, no. 137; in the Kunstindustrimuseet, Copenhagen, published in Daisy Lion-Goldschmidt, Ming Porcelain, London, 1978, pl. 90; and in the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden, see Barbara Harrisson, Keramiek uit Azie,Leeuwarden, 1985, no. 54.

This design, which is also known in blue-and-white and blue-and-yellow versions, was since the Xuande period (AD 1426-35), also executed in iron brown. Two brown-decorated dishes of this pattern of Xuande mark and period, one with designs in dark brown, the other in a paler café-au-lait tone, are illustrated in Mingdai Xuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu/ Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1998, cat. nos. 194 and 195.

A rare brown-decorated prototype of this design of Hongzhi mark and period (AD 1488-1505) is in the Sir Percival David Collection in the British Museum, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics: The World's Great Collections, Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, 1980-82, vol. VI, col. pl. 36; and a similar fragmentary Hongzhi dish from the imperial kiln site is illustrated in Jingdezhen chutu Mingdai yuyao ciqi [Porcelains from the Ming imperial kilns excavated at Jingdezhen], Beijing, 2009, pl. 105.

Dish with fruiting and flowering branches, Ming dynast, Zhengde mark and period, AD 1506–1621, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province. Porcelain with incised decoration, underglaze cobalt-blue mark and overglaze iron- brown. Height: 4,8 cm Diameter: 25,6 cm. On loan from Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, PDF,A.741 © 2017 Trustees of the British Museum

Sotheby's. The Meiyintang Collection, Part III - An Important Selection of Imperial Chinese Porcelains, Hong Kong | 04 avr. 2012