Dish with flowers. Porcelain with underglaze cobalt-blue decoration. Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province 江西省, 景德鎮. Ming dynasty, Yongle period, AD1403–1424. On loan from Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art. PDF B683. © Trustees of the British Museum

Height: 29 mm-Diameter: 198 mm. Porcelain dish with lobed sides and bracket-lobed rim. Underglaze blue with flower spray in each lobe outside . Similar flower sprays inside cavetto, with ogival roundel with three scrolling flowers in centre. Band of scrolling ruyi and leaves on rim. Unglazed base.

Potters at Jingdezhen made what many consider to be the finest blue-and-white porcelains ever achieved in the the Yongle emperor’s reign for the court. These have a lustrous quality never before accomplished and despite numerous attempts never successfully imitated. 

Bibliographic reference: Medley, Margaret, Volume 7: Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 7 of 12, Tokyo, Kodansha ltd, 1975

Medley, Margaret, Illustrated Catalogue of Underglaze Blue and Copper Red Decorated Porcelains, London, University of London, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1976

Pierson, Stacey, Illustrated Catalogue of Underglaze Blue and Copper Red Decorated Porcelains in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London, University of London, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2004