Lot 1513. A fine and rare early Ming blue and white lianzi bowl, Xuande six-character mark within double circles and of the period (1426-1435); 8 1/4 in. (21 cm.) diam. Estimate HKD 1,800,000 - HKD 2,500,000. Price realised HKD 3,256,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2006

Finely potted with deep rounded sides rising straight to the mouth rim, the centre of the interior painted with a fruiting and flowering pomegranate spray within a double-circle medallion, surrounded by a lotus scroll on the cavetto below a key-fret band, the exterior with two registers of lotus petals below a crested wave border, supported on a slightly tapered foot ring, box. 

Note: A number of these bowls designed with two bands of lotus petals on the exterior are published, including an example recovered from shards found at the Zhushan Imperial kilns, illustrated in Xuande Imperial Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1998, fig. 107; one in the Beijing Palace Museum, illustrated in Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (I), The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 2000, pl. 154; one from the Stephen Wootton Bushell bequest in the British Museum, illustrated by J. Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2000, pl. 4:27, where the author mentioned the use of the pomegranate as symbolic of fertility and the lotus for its Buddhist associations, p. 134; one in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, illustrated in the Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsuan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, 1998, no. 154; two included in An Exhibition of Blue-Decorated Porcelain of the Ming Dynasty, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1949, pl. 55, from the Roy Leventritt Collection, and pl. 56 from the Richard B. Hobart Collection; and another bowl from the collections of Wu Lai-hsi, George Eumorfopoulos and Enid and Brodie Lodge, most recently sold in these Rooms, 28 November 2005, lot 1412.

Christie's. Important Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art, Hong Kong, 28 November 2006