A Longquan celadon 'Dragon' bowl, Yuan-Early Ming Dynasty. Photo: Sotheby's.

sturdily potted, the deep rounded sides rising from a straight foot to a slightly everted rim, deftly carved on the exterior with a dragon striding among clouds, the fierce creature animatedly depicted with a powerful sinous body, muscular limbs and bulging eyes, the interior similarly decorated with an impressed central dragon roundel below a lotus scroll around the cavetto, applied overall with an unctuous olive-green glaze save for a ring on the base left unglazed and fired pale orange; 21.6 cm., 8 1/2  in. Estimation 400,000 — 600,000 HKD (40,239 - 60,359 EUR) 

Provenance: Christie's London, 12th November 2002, lot 2. 

This bowl is unusual for the freely incised dragons striding around the exterior; a closely related example was sold in these rooms, 29th November 1977, lot 4. Compare a spouted bowl similarly decorated with an impressed dragon in the centre, an incised lotus scroll in the interior well and a dragon on the exterior, included in the Special Exhibition of Dragon-Motif Porcelain in the National Palace Museum, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1983, cat. no. 11, together with a bowl of the same shape and size and incised with two dragons around the interior, cat. no. 12. See also a dish attributed to the 14th/15th century depicting a similar dragon, but with five claws rather than four, in the Sir Percival David collection and now in the British Museum, London, illustrated in Stacy Pierson, Designs as Signs. Decoration and Chinese Ceramics, London, 2001, pl. 62. 

Sotheby's. Important Ming Porcelain from a Private Collection. Hong Kong | 08 oct. 2013. http://www.sothebys.com