The dish is decorated in the center with a five-clawed dragon amidst flower scroll within a double-line border below similar decoration of two dragons in the well, which is repeated on the exterior above a band of ruyi heads on the slightly tapered foot ring, cloth box.

Provenance: Lindberg Collection.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 28 November 1978, lot 65.
The Lenora and Walter F. Brown Collection, San Antonio, Texas.

Literature: The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Exhibition of Ming Blue-and-White, Stockholm, 1964, p. 51, no. 46.

Exhibited: Stockholm, The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Exhibition of Ming Blue-and-White, 1964.

Note: A similar Zhengde-marked blue and white dish with dragons writhing amidst lotus scrolls is illustrated by Jessica Harrison-Hall, Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, p. 200, no. 8:15. Like the present dish, the British Museum example depicts dragons in different attitudes. The dragon in the center is shown with open jaws and bulging eyes. There are also two further dragons in the cavetto and reverse—one shown with jaws shut and the other with jaws open and contorted neck. Harrison-Hall notes that the pattern of the present dish was used on table wares of all shapes made for the Zhengde court.

Christie's. Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, New York, 25 September 2020