Porcelain 'palace bowl' with underglaze blue decoration. Ming dynasty. Chenghua mark and period. Donated by Mrs Winifred Roberts (In memory of A.D. Brankston. Registration number: 1954,0420.4. © Trustees of the British Museum

Diameter: 15.2 centimetres. Height: 7 centimetres. This delicately potted bowl has rounded spreading sides and stands on a tapering foot ring. It is painted inside with a stylized flower in a central medallion and in the cavetto and outside with a continuous scroll of flowering hibiscus or musk mallow. The outer rim, foot and join of foot to body are all emphasized by double blue lines. The base carries a six-character Chenghua reign mark in a double ring.

An identical bowl was excavated from the late Chenghua strata of the imperial waste heaps of kiln rejects at Zhushan, Jingdezhen. Two bowls with minor variations to this type of decoration are in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, and another is in the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka. Others with identical decoration are in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London, and in the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Imitations of this type of bowl were made in the Wanli period. A Wanli mark and period dish with the same design is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

Bibliographic reference: - Harrison-Hall, Jessica, Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, BMP, 2001

- Rawson, Jessica, The British Museum Book of Chinese Art, London, BMP, 1992