The early Ming design was also copied more closely in the Yongzheng period, as can be seen on a dish in the Shanghai Museum illustrated in Lu Minghua, Mingdai guanyao ciqi [Ming imperial porcelain], Shanghai, 2007, pl. 5-33. Whereas both the Xuande prototype and the Shanghai Museum Yongzheng version are covered with an even, dark cobalt-blue glaze, the Wanli example has the ground painted in underglaze cobalt blue, and on the present dish the pigment was blown onto the vessel through a tube covered with gauze, which produced this finely speckled powder-blue effect.

A similar dish in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is illustrated in Suzanne G. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989, pl. 248. The Meiyintang Collection also contains a blue and white dish, together with a bowl, decorated in the same technique, and a similar dish with the design colored in yellow, see Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 2, nos 843, 842 and 844; the Meiyintang dish, formerly in the collections of Edward G. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy Torrington, was acquired at Christie's New York, 2nd December 1989, lot 370, and sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 7th April 2011, lot 75. A further example sold in the same rooms, 3rd April 2018, lot 3617.