A fine blue and white 'Lotus' Bowl, Mark and period of Xuande. Photo: Sotheby's.

well potted with steep rounded sides resting on a short foot, painted in contrasting tones of deep cobalt-blue to the interior with a central medallion enclosing a pomegranate spray, encircled by six stylised lotus blooms, on a continuous meandering leafy stem, all beneath a key-fret band at the rim, the exterior with two overlapping bands of slender upright lappets beneath a band of crested waves, the base with a six-character mark in underglaze blue within double circles: 20.8 cm., 8 1/8  in. Estimation 4,000,000 — 6,000,000 HKD (402,388 - 603,582 EUR)

Provenance: A private Japanese collection.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 7th October 2006, lot 907. 

This fine bowl is notable for the double row of upright lappets and crashing wave band adorning the exterior. Bowls of this type are more commonly known with a single wide band of lappets and a key-fret motif encircling the rim exterior, which instead has been placed in the interior on the present piece. Two closely related examples can be found in the Palace Museum, Beijing, one illustrated in Gugong Bowuyuan cang Ming chu qinghua ci, vol. 2, Beijing, 2002, pl. 150, and the other published in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (I), Shanghai, 2000, pl. 154; another in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, was included in the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsuan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 154; and a fourth bowl, formerly in the collections of George Eumorfopoulos and Enid and Brodie Lodge, now in the Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo, illustrated in Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1987, pl. 633, was sold twice in our London rooms, 29th May 1940, lot 219, and 11th July 1978, lot 187. See also fragments of a similar Xuande bowl recovered from the waste heaps of the Ming imperial kilns, illustrated in Yuan's and Ming's Imperial Porcelains Unearthed from Jingdezhen, Beijing, 1999, pl. 144. 

For bowls of this type but decorated with a single row of petals on the exterior, the rim borders reversed and a loquat spray in the centre, see one also included in the National Palace Museum, Special Exhibition of Selected Hsuan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, op. cit., cat. no. 155; and another from the collection of Mrs. Alfred Clark, sold in these rooms, 30th April 1991, lot 16. While bowls with this design are known in both marked Xuande and unmarked Yongle versions, the present type is only found with a Xuande reign mark and of the period. 

Sotheby's. Important Ming Porcelain from a Private Collection. Hong Kong | 08 oct. 2013. http://www.sothebys.com