A yellow-ground blue and white 'gardenia' dish, Zhengde six-character mark and of the period (1506-1521)
Lot 862. A yellow-ground blue and white 'gardenia' dish, Zhengde six-character mark in underglaze blue within a double circle and of the period (1506-1521); 10 in. (25.6 cm.) diam., Japanese double wood box. Estimate USD 50,000 - USD 70,000. © Christie's Image Ltd 2021
The dish is decorated in the center with a blossoming gardenia branch surrounded by four flowering or fruiting sprays of ribbon-tied lotus, peach, grape and pomegranate, with a band of peony scroll on the exterior below the everted rim, all within double-line borders and painted in gradated washes of cobalt blue reserved against a pale lemon-yellow enamel ground.
Note: Imperial porcelains in the Zhengde period were often inspired by the decoration of earlier prototypes. The pattern of this dish was introduced in the Xuande period and continued to be made throughout the sixteenth century. Compare a dish of the same size and pattern illustrated by J. Harrison-Hall in Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, p. 204, no. 8:23.
Other examples of slightly smaller size, some with slight variances in the positioning of the ribbon-tied lotus and grape, are in the Percival David Foundation, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 6, pl. 37; the British Museum, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 5, pl. 187; the Koger Collection, illustrated by J. Ayers in the exhibition Catalogue, p. 96, no. 72; the Fogg Art Museum, illustrated by S. Valenstein, Ming Porcelains, and another in the Matsuoka Museum of Art, included in Selected Masterpieces of Oriental Ceramics, 1984, Catalogue no. 63.