A FINE AND VERY RARE EARLY MING BLUE AND WHITE DISH

细节

A FINE AND VERY RARE EARLY MING BLUE AND WHITE DISH
YONGLE

The large dish with rounded sides rising to a flared lipped rim, resting on a wedged shaped foot, elegantly painted to the centre of the interior with a curled leafy peony branch bearing two full blooms and two smaller buds, the cavetto painted with eight lush lotus blooms on a meander with full leaves and scrolled tendrils, the rim with eight detached floral and fruiting sprays bearing peaches, pomegranates, loquat, lilies, lotus, camellia, chrysanthemum and lingzhi, the exterior with a further lotus meander, the full-faced blooms alternating with those in profile, all between double-line borders, the glaze of greyish-blue tone with saturated 'heaped and piled' spots of intense cobalt colour--15 3/4in. (40cm.) diam.

拍品专文

An identical dish was included in the Exhibition of Imperial Porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande Periods, Excavated from the Site of the Ming Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1989, Catalogue, p. 63, fig. 1 and 2 found in the early Yongle stratum at the Zhonghua Road site, together with another dish with a similar medallion but with different borders and a barbed rim.

Cf. the other apparently identical example in the Topkapi Museum illustrated by T. Misugi, Chinese Porcelain Collections in the Near East, The Topkapi Palace Museum, vol. 2, pl. XIII, where the dish is illustrated in the centre of the display case in the old kitchen along with other Yuan and early Ming period wares.

Dishes of this small group are noted for their boldness of design and softness of brushstroke with very subtle and controlled shading. Cf. other dishes with this central configuration of a floral spray with two blooms such as the example illustrated by Addis, Chinese Porcelain from the Addis Collection, pl. 15, now in the British Museum; and the example sold in London, 10 December 1991, lot 228