Lot 3658. A fine yellow-glazed dish, Mark and period of Hongzhi (1488-1505), 21.6 cm, 8 1/2  in. Estimate 1,500,000 — 2,500,000 HKD. Lot sold for 1,875,000. Photo: Sotheby's.

thinly potted with rounded sides supported on a short foot, covered overall in an even pale egg-yolk yellow glaze, the white base inscribed in underglaze blue with a six-character reign mark within a double circle.

Provenance: A Japanese private collection.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 8th April 2013, lot 3060.

Exhibited: Ming Porcelain, Marchant, London, 2009, no. 9.

Note: A closely related Hongzhi reign-marked dish from the Qing court collection and still in Beijing is illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Monochrome Porcelain, Hong Kong, 1999, pl. 39; one in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, published in Minji meihin zuroku [Illustrated catalogue of important Ming porcelains], vol. 2, Tokyo, 1977, pl. 78; and another example, later incised with the name of Jahangir, Mughal Emperor of India, and a date corresponding to 1612, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, illustrated in Daisy Lion-Goldschmidt, Ming Porcelain, Fribourg, 1978, pl. 113. Further examples include one from the H.M. Knight collection, sold in our London rooms, 12th May 1970, lot 51, and again at Christie's Hong Kong, 3rd December 2008, lot 2541; one from the Noral Lyle Harris and B. and V. Lake collections, also sold in our London rooms, 8th November 2006, lot 28; and a pair of dishes from the E.T. Hall collection, sold in these rooms, 2nd May 2000, lot 503. One of the very rare examples of imperial Chinese dishes of this type to have reached the Near or Middle East is illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, London, 1986, vol. 2, pl. 774, and again in colour, p. 447.