Lot 3604. An extremely rare blue and white 'fish' dish, Mark and period of Chenghua (1465-1487); 15.1 cm. Lot Sold 6,350,000 HKD (Estimate 5,000,000 - 7,000,000 HKD). © Sotheby's 2023

Provenance: Sotheby's Hong Kong, 1st May 2001, lot 514.

Note: The present piece is an extremely rare example of early Chenghua imperial blue-and-white porcelain, featuring the transition from the style inherited from the Xuande period (r. 1425-35) to the more refined and delicate aesthetic commonly known as the matured Chenghua style. Like many other Changhua imperial porcelain of the early period, the design of this dish was inspired by Xuande prototypes; see, for example, a Xuande dish of larger size with a similar fish design and a wave border around the rim in the Taipei Palace Museum, illustrated in Mingdai Xuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu [Special Exhibition of Selected Hsuan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty], Taipei, 1998, cat.no. 180.

In contrast to the pieces identified as mature Chenghua style, which has brighter and clearer blue, this piece shows a noticeable dark area and a slight heaping and piling effect. This is a result of using high iron cobalt imported from the Middle East, commonly used during the Yongle and Xuande period in the early 15th century, while sparingly used during the Chenghua era (r. 1464-87). A typical example of this style is found on a blue-and-white meiping vase with a Xuande mark but of the Chenghua period, from the Sir Percival David Collection in the British Museum, illustrated in Rosemary Scott and Stacey Pierson, Flawless Porcelains: Imperial Ceramics from the Reign of the Chenghua Emperor, London, 1995, pl. 15.

Chenghua example of this design is extremely rare, that no other intact piece is known today. The only comparable example is a reconstructed piece from the sherds excavated in the Ming imperial kiln site in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, illustrated in Mingdai Chenghua yuyao ciqi. Shang / Imperial Porcelains from the Reign of Chenghua in the Ming Dynasty, I, Beijing, 2016. pl. 34. Two examples with similar ‘fish in a lotus pond’ decoration at the exterior, but on a turquoise ground and with a clear interior, one from the Ardebil Shrine Collection, is illustrated in The Emperor’s Broken China, Reconstructing Chenghua Porcelain, Hong Kong, 1995, fig. 3, p. 114; the other one from the Shanghai Museum, is illustrated in Lu Minghua, Mingdai guanyao ciqi [Ming dynasty imperial ceramics], Shanghai, 2007, pl. 3-66, p. 142. 

Dish of this design was reproduced again in the following Jiajing period (r. 1521-67), see, for example, a closely related piece bears a Jiajing mark and of the period was sold in these rooms, 14th November 1989, lot 30.