deftly painted with three five-clawed dragons soaring sinuously amidst flames and lingzhi-shaped clouds above crashing waves, one around the upper bulb and two on the lower, interrupted by lappet bands encircling the constricted waist, all between a border of pendent plantain leaves at the mouth and upright lappets skirting the foot.

Note: This robustly potted vase is notable for its dynamic painting of scaly five-clawed dragons chasing flaming pearls above crashing waves, a motif that is seldom found on vases of this form. Compare a double-gourd vase of similar form but with a slightly broader neck, decorated with figures in a landscape, from the Reitlinger collection and now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, illustrated in Soame Jenyns, Ming Pottery and Porcelain, London, 1988, pl. 31; another in the National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, published in Oriental Ceramics. The World’s Great Collections, vol. 3, Tokyo, 1982, col. pl. 32; and a larger example sold in our London rooms, 16th March 1954, lot 81. See also a smaller Jiajing mark and period vase of double-gourd shape, painted on the lower bulb with a dragon and phoenix, in the Huaihaitang collection, included in the exhibition Enlightening Elegance. Imperial Porcelain of the Mid to Late Ming, Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2013, cat. no. 19.

Blue-and-white hexagonal vase in double-gourd form, 1600 - 1625, Ming dynasty, porcelain, thrown and luted together with slip, with underglaze painting in cobalt-blue; 43.7 cm (height), 24.5 cm max. (diameter), at base 16.5 cm max. (diameter). Gift of Gerald Reitlinger, 1978, EA1978.921 © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford