Lot 5. A yellow-ground blue and white 'gardenia' dish, Ming dynasty, Zhengde six-character mark within a double circle in underglaze blue and of the period (1506-1521). Diamètre : 25,5 cm. Vendu : 52,920 € (Estimation : 30,000 – EUR 50,000 €). © Christie's Images Ltd 2023

Provenance: European private collection, acquired by the grandfather of the current owner from Hugo Meyl, Munich, January 1927 (according to the collector's notebook).

The grandfather of the present owner collected Chinese porcelain in the 1920s and 1930s on the European market. The first part of the collection, including some pieces from the Eumorfopoulos collection, was sold at Christie's Amsterdam, 31 October 2006, lots 473-486. The second and last part of the collection is now offered in Christie's Paris.

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.