Lot 1194. A famille verte 'Rice production' dish, Kangxi period (1662-1722), 13 7/8 in. (35.2 cm.) diam. Estimate USD 6,000 - USD 8,000. Price realised USD 50,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2017 

The dish is decorated with farmers sifting rice in a courtyard and a lady and a child inside a house in the background, accompanied by a poem describing the scene. 

Note: The scene depicted on the present dish is number nineteen from the Gengzhi tu (Pictures of Ploughing and Weaving).This series was first made during the Song Dynasty as a set of forty-five scenes, as part of the didactics of teaching princes and officials the necessity of sericulture and farming. In the twenty-eigth year of the Kangxi reign (1689), the emperor ordered the court painter Jiao Bingzhen to produce an album based on this series. In the thirty-fifth year (1696), sets of wood block prints were produced based on Jiao Bingzhen's album, comprising twenty-three illustrations of farming and the same number of weaving.

Christie's. Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, 14 - 15 September 2017, New York