Lot 86. A blue and white ‘immortal’ dish, Ming dynasty, Tianqi period (1620-1627). Estimate 50,000 — 70,000 HKD (5,645 - 7,902 EUR). Unsold. Photo Sotheby's

the shallow rounded sides rising from a short tapered foot, freely painted to the interior with an immortal riding on a double gourd in a landscape under the moon, encircled by a band of cash coin at the rim, the exterior with birds perched on fruiting peach branches divided by circles, inscribed to the base with an apocryphal six-character Hongwu reign mark within a double circle; 12.7 cm, 5 in.

Provenance: Dunt King, Hong Kong, 1960.
Bluett & Sons Ltd, London, 1960 (£12:10).
Collection of Roger Pilkington (1928-69), from 1962 (£21).

Note: Compare a pair of dishes similarly painted to the exterior with birds perched on branches, from the collection of Robert and Ann Walker Bell and now in the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto, illustrated in Patricia F. Ferguson,Cobalt Treasures, Toronto, 2003, pl. 36; one from the collection of Charles Russell, published in R.L. Hobson, Chinese Ceramics in Private Collections, London, 1931, pl. 305; another from the collection of H.F. Parfitt, sold in our London rooms, 8th February 1946, lot 26; and two further dishes sold in these rooms, 1st December 1977, lot 430, and 27th May 1978, lot 467.