A blue and white 'Floral' charger, Ming dynasty, Yongle period (1403-1424)
Lot 3207. A blue and white 'Floral' charger, Ming dynasty, Yongle period (1403-1424); 37.8 cm, 14 7/8 in. Estimate 6,000,000 — 8,000,000 HKD (625,910 - 834,547 EUR). Lot Sold 5,040,000 HKD (521,511 EUR). © Sotheby's 2018
with deep rounded sides supported on a sturdy short foot, the exterior of the thick walls exquisitely depicted in shaded tones of cobalt with a continuous garden scene depicting twenty boys divided in several groups, including one with a boy riding a hobby-horse in the shade of a large leaf held up by another, another with two boys portrayed catching fish with their hands immersed in the water of a large fishbowl, and another of four boys rendered sitting on the ground, the dynamic and joyous scene further detailed with ornamental rockwork and verdant trees, the balustraded background picked out with a lotus pool, all against a distant mountainscape and ruyi clouds encircling the rim, below a double-line border repeated on the inner rim, the straight foot skirted with a key-fret border.
Provenance: Collection of Jeronimo Martinez.
Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 24th November 1987, lot 30.
Note: he present dish is a fine example of the technical developments achieved by potters during the early Ming dynasty.
One of the most striking decorative innovations of early 15th century wares was the use of separate floral sprays in the cavettos instead of the continuous scroll. The heavy wreath of lotus or peony found on 14th century dishes gave way to a series of delicate and more varied motifs. Two sets of six flower sprays were commonly repeated so that each pair of flowers sat diagonally opposite each other.
A closely related dish in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, was included in the Special Exhibition of Early Ming Period Porcelain, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1982, cat. no. 37; one in the National Museum of China is published in Zhongguo Guojia Bowuguan guancang wenwu yanjiu congshu/Studies on the Collections of the National Museum of China, Ciqi juan: Mingdai [Porcelain section: Ming dynasty], Shanghai, 2007, pl. 20; another in the British Museum, London, is illustrated in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics, London, 2001, pl. 3:35; and a fourth example, published in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. 2, London, 1994, pl. 663, was sold in these rooms, 8th April 2013, lot 20. Three further dishes from the Ardabil Shrine in the National Museum of Iran, Tehran, are included in John Alexander Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine, Washington, D.C., 1956, pl. 35; and a dish in the British Museum is shown next to a related pottery copy from Iznik in Turkey in Jessica Rawson, Chinese Ornament. The Lotus and the Dragon, London, 1984, pl. 163. See also a dish of this type in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in Pleasingly Pure and Lustrous: Porcelains from the Yongle Reign of the Ming Dynasty. Guidebook, Taipei, 2017, pp. 70-71.
A fine blue and white barbed dish, Ming dynasty, Yongle period (1403-1424); 38.3 cm., 15 1/8 in. Sold for 3,880,000 HKD atSotheby's Hong Kong, 8th April 2013, lot 20. © Sotheby's 2013
Cf. my post: A fine blue and white barbed dish, Ming dynasty, Yongle period (1403-1424)
Porcelain serving dish with a bracketed rim and underglaze blue decoration, Ming dynasty, Yongle period (1403-1425). Height: 7.6 centimetres, Diameter: 38 centimetres, Weight: 2.4 kilograms. Donated by Mrs Walter Sedgwick, 1937,1012.1 © 2017 Trustees of the British Museum
Dish, Iznik, Ottoman dynasty, circa 1535-1545. Black, green, manganese, cobalt painted and glazed ceramic, pottery. Height: 7.6 centimetres, Diameter: 38.9 centimetres (rim), Diameter: 20.5 centimetres (base). Bequeathed by Miss Edith Godman, 1983, G.33 © The Trustees of the British Museum
Although examples of this exact design have not been recorded from the excavations of the Ming imperial kiln site, similar large dishes of this form, painted with related designs, have come to light in the Yongle stratum of the site; see, for example, the dish included in the exhibition Yongle Imperial Porcelain Excavated at Zhushan, Jingdezhen, Capital Museum, Beijing, 2007, cat. no. 68.