Lot 957. A superb large blue and white 'floral-scroll' barbed-rim charger, Yongle period (1403-1425); 37.5 cm diam, Japanese double wood boxes. Price realised HKD$5,040,000 (Estimate: HK$400,000 - 600,000). © Christie's Images Ltd 2025.

Provenance: Sold at Sotheby’s London, 6 April 1976, lot 109
Toguri Museum of Art, Tokyo
Sold at Sotheby’s London, 100 Selected Chinese & Korean Ceramics from the Toguri Collection, 9 June 2004, lot 19

Note: The dish has a foliate everted rim and rests on a short, tapered foot. The centre is decorated with a mixed floral scroll with five blooms, with peony in the centre and lotus, hibiscus, camellia and gardenia around, the sides are further decorated with floral sprays. The interior rim is painted with a lingzhi scroll and left plain on the outside.

 

Dishes with similarly arranged decoration are found in institutions worldwide, as well as in private collections, including one in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, collection number: guci006109, and illustrated in Pleasingly Pure and Lustrous: Porcelains from the Yongle Reign (1403-1424) of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 2017, pp.70-71(fig. 1. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, left); one in the Palace Museum, Beijing, decorated with a band of waves to the rim, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (I), Hong Kong, 2000, p.62, no.59 (fig. 2. Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, right);

one in the British Museum, see J. Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, p. 116, no. 3:35; one from the collection of W.T. Chan, published in The Radiant Ming-through the Min Chiu Society Collection, Hong Kong, 2015, p.87, no.63; and one from the Tianminlou Collection, illustrated in Blue and White Porcelain from the Collection of Tianminlou Foundation, Shanghai, 1996, pp.74-75, no.23, later sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 2 April 2019, lot 2; and a closely related dish from the Kwong Yee Che Tong collection, sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 30 May 2024, lot 2806.