MING DYNASTY, EARLY 15TH CENTURY

The present vessel is decorated with an anhua design of a lotus scroll on the exterior and covered overall with a tianbai, ‘sweet-white’ glaze, with the exception of the base and foot rim, revealing the smooth and white body. Similar anhua-decorated tianbai-glazed vessels are found in institutions worldwide. See for example, a Yongle meiping in the National Museum of China, illustrated in Studies of the Collections of the National Museum, ciqi juan, Mingdai, Shanghai, 2007, no. 25, and a jar with three handles, ibid., no. 24 (fig.1), both decorated with lotus scrolls. However, no other tianbai-glazed vessel of this form has been published. The closest comparable is a slightly larger Yongle blue and white vessel with cover (25.8 cm. wide.) excavated at Dongmentou Zhushan (fig.2), illustrated in Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain excavated at Jingdezhen, Taipei, 1996, pp. 210-211, no. 74.