Dish, porcelain painted in underglaze blue with peafowls and plants, China, Yuan dynasty, mid 14th century. Height: 7.6 cm, Diameter: 45.8 cm. C.24-1968. Purchased with the assistance of The Art Fund. © V&A Images.

Porcelain dish, with shallow, rounded cavetto and flat, canted rim; v-shaped footring and flat base. Painted in underglaze blue on the inside with two peafowls among rocks, with growing bamboo, lingzhi fungus, floral sprays, grapevines and two insects; round the cavetto is a band of scrolling lotus and on the rim a border of lozenge diaper-work. A similar lotus scroll band encircles the outside. Rich violet-toned cobalt turning to black where thickly applied, lustrous glaze of a bluish-green tinge where thick. The exposed body on foot and base turning to orange-buff with brown speckling.

Exhibition: A 1,000 years of Chinese Ceramic Art (Quantas Gallery, London 01/01/1966-31/12/1966)

Bibliographic References: Pope, John Fourteenth-century blue-and-white; a group of Chinese porcelains in the Topkapu Sarayi Müzesi, Istanbul. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, 1970, Plate 14a. 
For a dish with comparable birds 
Watson, William L'art de l'ancienne Chine / William Watson Paris: Mazenod, ca. 1979, Fig. 664 
Ayers, John. Far Eastern Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1980, Monochrome Plate No. 39