with slightly flared conical sides rising from a sharp angle above the low foot, painted around the outside in a soft underglaze blue with two five-clawed dragons with split curling tails among iron-red clouds, with a blue key-fret border below the rim and a broad blue band around the foot, the inside plain white and engraved with a similar dragon in the centre and two more around the well, the base inscribed with a four-character reign mark.

Provenance: Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London (A 705).
Sotheby's London, 15th October 1968, lot 110.
Sotheby's London 14th December 1982, lot 190.
Collection of Eugene O. Perkins.
Christie's New York, 2nd June 1989, lot 13.
Collection of Irene and Peter Scheinman.
Christie's New York, 23rd March 1995, lot 100.

Exhibited: Born of Earth and Fire: Chinese Ceramics from the Scheinman Collection, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, 1992, cat. no. 82 (illustrated).
Evolution to Perfection. Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection/Evolution vers la perfection. Céramiques de Chine de la Collection Meiyintang, Sporting d'Hiver, Monte Carlo, 1996, cat. no. 133 (illustrated).

Literature: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1680.

Note: This pattern is unusual, both in the way the dragons are depicted (compare the more traditional Zhengde dragons, lot 60), and in its colour combination, where the red clouds appear almost like an afterthought. They do, however, form an integral part of this pattern. The companion piece to this bowl still belongs to the Sir Percival David collection and is now on display in the British Museum, London, see Oriental Ceramics: The World's Great Collections, Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, 1980-82, vol. 6, no. 126; another is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from the Herzman collection, see Suzanne G. Valenstein, The Herzman Collection of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1992, cat. no. 83; one from the Koger collection has been published in John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics. The Koger Collection, London, 1985, pl. 56. Eight bowls of this description are listed in the catalogue of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, Gugong ciqi lu [Record of porcelains from the Old Palace], Taipei, 1961-6, part  II, vol. 2, p. 77; and another bowl, broken and repaired with metal rivets, is in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang gu taoci ciliao xuancui [Selection of ancient ceramic material from the Palace Museum], Beijing, 2005, vol. 1, pl. 137. 

Bowl with dragon, Ming dynasty, Zhengde mark and period, AD 1506–21. Porcelain with underglaze cobalt-blue and overglaze iron-red decoration, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, 6,4 x 15,7 cm. Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, PDF A706 © Trustees of the British Museum