Lot 2209. An imperial yellow-ground blue and white dish, Zhengde six-character mark within double-circles and of the period (1506-1521); 10 in. (25.4 cm.) diam. Estimate HKD 500,000 - HKD 700,000. Price realised HKD 800,000. © Christie's Image Ltd 2012

The centre is decorated with a blossoming gardenia branch surrounded by four flowering or fruiting sprays of ribbon-tied lotus, peach, grape and pomegranate, with a band of peony scroll on the exterior below the everted rim, all within double-line borders and painted in gradated washes of cobalt blue reserved against a thin, pale lemon-yellow enamel ground, box.

The Property of a Japanese Private Collector

Provenance: Sold at Christie's New York, 3 June 1993, lot 211.

Note: A dish of the same size and pattern in the collection of Peter and Irene Scheinman, was included in the exhibition, Born of Earth and Fire, Chinese Ceramics from the Scheinman Collection, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1992, Catalogue no. 81. Other examples of slightly smaller size, some with slight variances in the positioning of the ribbon-tied lotus and grape are in the Percival David Foundation, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 6, pl. 37; the British Museum, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 5, pl. 187; the Koger Collection, illustrated by Ayers in the exhibition Catalogue, no. 72; the Fogg Art Museum, illustrated by Valenstein, Ming Porcelains, China Institute in America, 1970, Catalogue no. 36; one in the Matsuoka Museum of Art, included in Selected Masterpieces of Oriental Ceramics, 1984, Catalogue no. 63; and another included in Ming Porcelains from the Freer Gallery of Art, 1953, Catalogue nos. 31, 32. 

Christie's. Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art. 28 November 2012. Hong Kong