Lot 1518. A superb early Ming blue and white meiping, Yongle period (1403-1425); 11 5/8 in. (29.5 cm.) high. Estimate HKD 7,000,000 - HKD 9,000,000. Price realised HKD 7,960,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2006

The elegant baluster body boldly painted in rich tones of cobalt-blue with extensive 'heaping and piling' with six detached fruiting sprays of pomegranate, lychee, crab apple, longyan, peach and loquat between double lines, the foot encircled with overlapping leaves and the shoulder with a band of pendent lotus petal lappets enclosing elaborate trefoils, the base unglazed, box. 

Note: Several of these Yongle-period meiping with fruiting and flowering branches are known. They represent the zenith of early fifteenth-century style with their elegant shape, restrained composition and delicate painting.

J. Ayers and R. Krahl note in Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, vol. II, London, 1986, p. 521, that six early fifteenth-century meiping of this design are in the Topkapi Saray collection, of which three categories based on height have been determined. The first group of four vases measuring 29-30 cm. in height, to which the present vase belongs, are identified in the Museum, two of them illustrated ibid., col. pl. 430. The second group measures 35 cm. and the largest size recorded is 42 cm., with one meiping, TKS 15/1388, fitting into this third group. A meiping of this design and of a smaller size (24.5 cm.) is illustrated by J.A. Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine, Washington, 1956, pl. 51, no. 29.413.

Similar Yongle vases include one in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated by Geng Baochang (ed.), Gugong Bowuguan cang Ming chu qinghua ci, Beijing, 2002, vol. 1, pl. 76; two in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, included in the Illustrated Catalogue of Ming Dynasty Porcelain, Yongle Ware, pl. 12; one in the Percival David Foundation Catalogue, section 3, no. A610; one illustrated in Selected Chinese Ceramics from Han to Qing Dynasties, Taiwan, 1990, pl. 80, and sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 2 May 2005, lot 504; an example included in An Exhibition of Blue-Decorated Porcelain of the Ming Dynasty, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1949, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 89, now in the Matsuoka Museum of Art, Tokyo; and another from the collection of Edward T. Chow, sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 19 May 1981, lot 409.

Christie's. Important Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art, Hong Kong, 28 November 2006