Lot 208. A large rare blue and white 'floral scroll' dish, Yongle period (1403-1424); 16 ¼ in. (41.2 cm.) diam. Estimate GBP 30,000 - GBP 50,000. Price realised GBP 30,000. © Christie’s Images Limited 2015.

The dish is painted in brilliant tones of deep cobalt blue characterised by 'heaping and piling' effect on the interior with an interlacing vine bearing blossoms and buds including peony, camellia and mallow surrounded by their respective leaves, below a composite floral scroll of eleven flowerheads to the cavetto and a band of cresting waves encircling the rim. The exterior is similarly painted with a frieze of composite floral scroll between double-line borders.   

Provenance: Christies London, Le Grand Gout - A Private European Collection, 17 June 2009, lot 40.
From the Collection of Francis Golding (1944-2013).

Note: A dish of this type was included in the Chang Foundation exhibition Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Taipei, 1996, no. 44. Other similar examples include one in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, published in the Illustrated Catalogue of Ming Dynasty Porcelain, pl. 37; one exhibited at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Ming and Ch'ing Porcelain from the Collection of the T.Y. Chao Family Foundation, 1978, and illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 5; one illustrated by J. Ayers in The Baur Collection, Geneva, 1969, vol. II, no. A140; and another included in the Philadelphia Museum of Art Exhibition of Chinese Blue and White, 1994, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 38.