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Lot Essay
The blossoming plum depicted here announces the approaching warmth of spring when the new blossoms emerge, and would therefore have been most suitable for tea parties during the late winter or early spring. See Butler, op.cit., p.27, no.13, for a similar design, without the poem, bearing the Tianqi four-character mark; and also Sekai Toji Zenshu, op. cit., p.12. The poem roughly translates: Nothing special from Jiangnan, so I send you only a present of a branch of Spring.