A rare Ming-style yellow-enamelled blue and white 'Lotus Bouquet' dish, Yongzheng six-character mark in underglaze blue within a double circle and of the period (1723-1735). Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.

The dish is delicately potted with shallow rounded sides and is supported on a short foot. The interior is finely painted in underglaze-blue with simulated 'heaping and piling' to depict a bunch of lotus flowers encircled by a band of ten flower heads with leafy scrolls. The exterior is similarly decorated with flowers and leafy scrolls. The decoration is all reserved on a lemon-yellow ground, with a classic scroll border to the interior and a key-fret border to the exterior covered in a bluish-green glaze. 10¾ in. (27.4 cm.) diam. Estimate £40,000 – £60,000 ($67,160 - $100,740)

Provenance: From a private English collection, amassed in the early 20th century.

Notes: This combination of yellow enamel and underglaze-blue decoration emulates the style of earlier Ming prototypes during the fifteenth century. Compare this lot to two similarly decorated dishes dating to the Qianlong period; one illustrated by R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994, vol. 2, p. 133, no. 763; another included in the exhibition, Splendour of the Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 9 June - 2 August 1992, p. 275, no. 142. See a similar Yongzheng dish of larger size (15 ? in. diam.), sold at Christie's New York, 19 March 2009, lot 749; and a pair of smaller Yongzheng dishes of the same pattern (8 ½ in. diam.), sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 31 October 2000, lot 889.

Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 13 May 2014, London, King Street - http://www.christies.com/