Lot 14. A very fine and rare pair of famille-rose dishes, Marks and period of Yongzheng (1723-1735); 13.4 cm., 5 1/4 in. Estimate 8,000,000—12,000,000 HKD. Lot Sold 21,940,000 HKD (2,822,362 USD) to a Hong Kong Dealer. Photo Sotheby's 2011

each dish delicately potted with a flared rim and rising from a short, straight foot, decorated in brilliant famille-rose enamels on the outside with an asymmetrical composition of a blooming hibiscus branch and a weed issuing from the base and extending around the sides, before spreading around the interior and bearing two large flowers, a dragonfly in grisaille hovering nearby, each inscribed on the base with a six-character mark within a double square

Provenance: Collection of H.M. Knight, The Hague (1950s).
Christie's Hong Kong, 19th January 1988, lot 363.

Exhibited: Oosterse Schatten: 4,000 Jaar Aziatische Kunst, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1954, cat. no. 381.

Literature: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 2, no. 959.

Note: No other saucer of this design and period appears to be recorded, but this exquisite motif is also known from a larger dish in the Umezawa Kinenkan, Tokyo, included in the exhibition Chūgoku no tōji/Special Exhibition of Chinese Ceramics, Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, 1994, cat. no. 324. The same motif appears also on dishes with Qianlong seal mark and of that period; a Qianlong dish in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is illustrated in Rose Kerr, Chinese Ceramics. Porcelain of the Qing Dynasty 1644-1911, London, 1986, p. 112, pl. 97; one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in Oriental Ceramics: The World's Great Collections, Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, 1980–82, vol. 11, no. 158. The design was still closely copied in the late Qing or Republican period, an example of which in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, is illustrated in He Li, Chinese Ceramics. A New Standard Guide, London, 1996, pl. 673.

Sotheby's. The Meiyintang Collection - An Important Selection of Imperial Chinese Porcelains;.| 07 Apr 11. Hong Kong