Lot 35. A carved cinnabar lacquer 'Four Favourites' dish, Incised mark and period of Yongle (1403-1424); 12.4 cm., 4 7/8 in. Estimate 1,200,000 — 1,800,000 HKD. Lot sold 1,480,000 HKD. Photo Sotheby's

with shallow everted sides rising to a six-lobed rim, supported on a thin tapered footring of conforming section, deftly carved through rich layers of cinnabar lacquer to the ochre-yellow ground below, the interior with a six-lobed medallion depicting the Song scholar Zhou Dunyi eating at a table inside a storeyed pavilion, watching one of his attendants picking lotus in a pond while another carries a wine ewer towards him, all surrounded by cragged rocks, lush wutong and a tall overhanging pine tree against a ground of curving lines in the sky and waves in the distance, the cavetto decorated with six large flowers including chrysanthemum, camellia, hibiscus, peony and pomegranate, each wreathed in their matching foliage and repeated on the underside, all contained within a thick rolled lip picked out with ‘cash’ floral diapers, the base lacquered in brownish-black and finely incised with a needle with a six-character vertical reign mark on the left

Provenance: Collection of Edward T. Chow.
Christie’s London, 14th December 1983, lot 24.

Exhibited: 2000 Years of Chinese Lacquer, Art Gallery, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1993, cat. no. 41.
Layered Beauty: The Baoyizhai Collection of Chinese Lacquer, Art Museum, Institute of Chinese Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2010, cat. no. 38.

Note: This exquisitely carved dish represents the height of early Ming dynasty lacquer carving. Amongst imperial carvings of the Yongle period, it stands out for its subject matter that was especially popular in the Yuan period and, as it appears, continued to be used in the Ming dynasty. Peter Lam in Layered Beauty, Hong Kong, 2010, p.104, identifies the figure in the pavilion as the Song scholar Zhou Dunyi, who is looking out into a lotus pond, while his attendant is serving him food and wine. There is another attendant in the garden who has picked a lotus flower for the scholar. The air, water and ground are skilfully represented by different geometric patterns, which are deeply carved to separate the three and to create a three-dimensional effect to the composition.

For an earlier, Yuan dynasty example and the inspiration for later dishes as the present example, see a six-lobed piece, carved with a figural scene depicting the poet Wang Xizhi, seated in a pavilion gazing at a geese in flight, included in the exhibition 2000 Years of Chinese Lacquer, Art Gallery, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1993, cat. no. 36; and another Yuan example, from the Florence and Herbert Irving collection and now on loan in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, included in James C.Y. Watt and Barbara Brennan Ford, East Asian Lacquer, New York, 1991, pl. 23.

Compare a dish of this type but carved with a different figural scene, similarly bearing a six-character Yongle reign mark, included in the Oriental Ceramics Society exhibition The Arts of the Ming Dynasty, London, 1957, cat. no. 233, sold in our London rooms, 3rd December 1963, lot 168; and another figural dish of the same shape, included in the exhibition From Innovation to Conformity. Chinese Lacquer from the 13th to 16th Centuries, Bluett and Sons, London, 1989, cat. no. 10.
Lobed lacquer dishes, reminiscent of a prunus flower, continued to be made throughout the Ming dynasty, as may be seen from a Wanli mark and period example that bears a cyclical date corresponding to 1583, offered in these rooms, 8th April 2007, lot 758.

Sotheby's. The Baoyizhai Collection of Chinese Lacquer, Part 1, Hong Kong, 08 Apr 2014