AN IMPORTANT MING WUCAI 'DRAGON' DISH

Details

AN IMPORTANT MING WUCAI 'DRAGON' DISH
ENCIRCLED LONGQING SIX-CHARACTER MARK AND OF THE PERIOD

The dish of shallow saucer shape with everted rim, painted in the centre with sinuous descending iron-red dragon and ascending underglaze-blue dragon, chasing a 'flaming pearl', amid clouds and flames enamelled in green and yellow, utilising the underglaze-blue outline, all within a double iron-red circle in the well and similarly repeated under the rim, the exterior decorated with four striding dragons in underglaze-blue, iron-red, yellow and green respectively, the slightly convex base bearing the nianhao, Daming Longqing nian zao, made in the Longqing era of the Great Ming period, firing flaw glaze flake to inner footrim, enamels rubbed
13 1/8 in. (33.3 cm.) diam.

Lot Essay

Compare with a Longqing-marked wucai dish of this size and pattern in the British Museum illustrated by Jessica Rawson, Chinese Ornament, The Lotus and the Dragon, pl. 5; one in the Percival David Foundation illustrated by Rosemary Scott and Rose Kerr, Ceramic Evolution in the Middle Ming Period, fig. 20; and a last example in the Idemitsu Art Gallery, Tokyo, included in the Osaka Museum exhibition, Ming and Qing Ceramics and Works of Art, 1980, Catalogue, no. 91.

(US$90,000-120,000)

More from The Imperial Sale & Fine Chinese Works of Art

View All