Lot 18. An extremely rare blue and white 'dragon' bird feeder, Mark and period of Xuande (1426-1435); 7.4 cm., 2 7/8 in. Estimate 1,800,000 - 2,500,000 HKD. Lot sold ,180,000 HKD. Photo Sotheby's 2012

of compressed globular form, the rounded sides rising from a flat base to a slightly raised rim, set with two small circular lugs attached side by side to fit the bars of a birdcage, the exterior decorated in relief with a chilong, with a slender undulating body, a pair of three-clawed feet and a long scrolling bifid tail, the raised area painted with blue details and reserved on a blue-painted ground, the lugs picked out with single blue lines, the dragon turning its head back towards a six-character horizontal reign mark inscribed in a rectangular cartouche below the rim, the interior left white and the base unglazed

Provenance: Eskenazi Ltd, London.

Exhibited: Yuan and Early Ming Blue and White Porcelain, Eskenazi Ltd, London, 1994, cat. no. 23.

Literature: Eskenazi Ltd, Yuan and Early Ming Blue and White Porcelain, London, 1994, cat. no. 23
Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1658.

Note: Relief moulding is extremely rare on Xuande (AD 1426-35) blue-and-white wares, but has been similarly used on a small Xuande water dropper in form of a mandarin duck, in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, which is illustrated in Mingdai Xuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu/Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 4.

A Xuande bird feeder of the present dragon design, recovered from the waste heaps of the Ming imperial kilns at Jingdezhen, has been included in the exhibition Jingdezhen chutu Ming Xuande guanyao ciqi/Xuande Imperial Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 55-3, together with others with different designs in white relief against a blue ground, cat. nos. 55-4 and 55-6. A line drawing of this model is published in Geng Baochang, Ming Qing ciqi jianding [Appraisal of Ming and Qing porcelain], Hong Kong, 1993, p. 49, fig. 85 (1).

Sotheby's. The Meiyintang Collection, Part IV - An Important Selection of Imperial Chinese Porcelains, Hong Kong, 09 oct. 2012