Lot 803. A fine and very rare blue and white lobed bowl, Mark and period of Xuande (1426-1435): 22.8 cm. Lot Sold 6,985,000 HKD (Estimate 3,000,000 - 6,000,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2025
 

of conical form with a six-lobed rim supported on a slightly tapered foot, finely painted in rich cobalt blue accentuated with characteristic 'heaping and piling', the interior centred with a medallion enclosing a flowering peach branch, surrounded by three lotus sprays alternating with sprays of tree peony, chrysanthemum, and herbaceous peony, all beneath a narrow border of twelve small floral sprigs at the rim, the exterior decorated with six large fruit sprays, comprising peach, cherry, loquat, pomegranate, grape, and lychee, alternating with six smaller sprays of flowers below, including camellia, chrysanthemum, lotus, rose, peony, and one other flower, the foot further encircled by a classic scroll, the base inscribed with a six-character reign mark within a double circle
 

Provenance: Collection of President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964).
Collection of Mr and Mrs Allan Hoover (1907-1993).
Collection of Ira and Nancy Koger.
Sotheby’s New York, 27th November 1990, lot 6.
 

Note: Freely painted in cobalt blue with vibrant sprays of blooms and fruiting branches, the present bowl is an elegant and rare example of a much-coveted imperial design.

With bold conical walls indented with the suggestion of floral lobes, the present form is derived directly from white-glazed Qingbai wares of the Song dynasty. Compare, for example, a Qingbai bowl of this form preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (accession no. 91.1.389), illustrated on the Museum’s website. However, while this design continued to be produced at Jingdezhen in various monochrome glazes during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), most monochrome examples appear to have been destroyed at the kiln site with the imperial potters opting instead for the favoured palette of the 15th century; blue and white.

Another bowl of this design of Xuande mark and period is preserved in the Qing court collection at the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang Ming chu qinghua ci [Early Ming blue and white porcelain in the Palace Museum], Beijing, 2002, vol. 2, pl. 146, together with a Kangxi copy of spurious Xuande mark, pl. 179. Also compare two Xuande bowls of this design in the Palace Museum, Taipei, included in Mingdai Xuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu / Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 62, and Ming Xuande ciqi tezhan mulu / Catalogue of a Special Exhibition of Hsuan-te Period Porcelain, Taipei, 1980, cat. no. 36, the latter together with another Qing copy of similar design, cat. no. 35; and a fourth unmarked bowl, also in Taiwan, likely predating the Xuande examples, included in the Mingdai chunian ciqi tezhan mulu / Catalogue of a Special Exhibition of Early Ming Period Porcelain, Taipei, 1982, cat. no. 20. Another bowl of Xuande mark and period in the Capital Museum, Beijing, is published in Shoudu Bowuguan cang ci xuan [Selection of porcelains from the Capital Museum], Beijing, 1991, pl. 97; and another, in the Shanghai Museum, in Lu Minghua, Shanghai Bowuguan zangpin yanjiu daxi/Studies of the Shanghai Museum Collections: A Series of Monographs. Mingdai guanyao ciqi [Ming imperial porcelain], Shanghai, 2007, pl. 3-34.

Bowls of this type are rarely preserved in private collections. Compare one example in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. II, London, 1994, pl. 671, from the collections of K.L. Dawes, John F. Woodthorpe and Frederick Mayer, sold in our London rooms, 6th April 1954, lot 24, and again in these rooms, 5th October 2011, lot 12; another example from the collections of R.H.R Palmer and the Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong included in Selected Treasures of Chinese Art, Min Chiu Society Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibition, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1990, cat. no. 133, and sold twice at Christie’s Hong Kong, 17th January 1989, lot 567 and 3rd November 1996, lot 546; and a third example from the H.R.N. Norton and Pilkington Collections, sold most recently in these rooms, 5th April 2016, lot 20.
 

As evidenced by the varied dating of Palace Museum examples, the present design continued to remain popular in the imperial court throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties; reproduced in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Compare three other bowls of this design – similarly preserved in the Hoover and Koger Collections and sold in our New York rooms, 27th November 1990: lot 9, of Wanli mark and period; and lot 8, a pair of bowls bearing an apocryphal Xuande mark but of eighteenth century date.
 

President Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou created a very fine collection of Chinese blue and white porcelain. The pair began collecting during their time in China around 1900 while Hoover served as a mining engineer in Tianjin, and maintained their passion on their return to the United States. The president continued adding to the collection, which contained over four hundred pieces at its height, until his death in 1964 – some twenty years after his wife's passing.

Sotheby's. Imperial Connoisseurship Treasures of Chinese Art from A Prestigious Collection, Hong Kong, 21 November 2025