of rounded form with flared rim, supported on a tall flaring stem with a sealed flat base, the interior inscribed with a six-character reign mark, the exterior painted in a clear cobalt blue with two fabulous animals galloping among stylised clouds above crested waves continuing over the stem, the animals with an elephant's head with long trunk, a lion's bushy mane and tail, pointed wings, three paws and one four-clawed dragon's leg, one with its head turned, the other looking straight ahead, the base unglazed.

Provenance: Sotheby's London, 14th July 1970, lot 153.
Christie's London, 8th December 1986, lot 311.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 15th November 1988, lot 136.
Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo.
Eskenazi Ltd, London.

Literature: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1696.

Note: This stem cup, whose delicate painting style is very unusual for the Wanli period, closely follows a Xuande prototype in shape and design, an example of which in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, is included in the exhibition Mingdai Xuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu/Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 78. Wanli versions of this design are extremely rare, but one other such stem cup from the collection of Andrew L. and Amanda Adams Love has been sold at Christie's New York, 20th September 2005, lot 262. Compare also a Chenghua dish with similar motifs in the Meiyintang collection, illustrated in Krahl, op.cit., vol. 4, no. 167.