This attractive dish is made in imitation of the Song dynasty chrysanthemum dishes which appeared in lacquer, metal and ceramics. See, for example, the elegant black lacquer dish sold in these Rooms, 30 April 2001, lot 622; and a Song guanyao dish in the National Palace Museum, Taibei, included in the exhibition, China at the Inception of the Second Millennium - Art and Culture of the Song Dynasty, 2000, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. III-9.

Chrysanthemum-shaped dishes appear in a complete series of twelve colours. An identical brown-glazed dish is included in the most notable set of twelve in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Kangxi Yongzheng Qianlong, Hong Kong, 1989, p. 316, no. 145. Cf. a pair of dishes from the collection of H. M. Knight, one which was sold in these Rooms, 28 October 2002, lot 603, and the other included in the 1988 Oriental Ceramic Society exhibition, Iron in the Fire, Ashmolean, Oxford, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 90, and sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, The Hall Family Collection, 2 May 2000, lot 552; another example in the Capital Museum, Beijing, illustrated by Xiong Liao, Beauty of Ceramics: Gems of the Official Kilns, Taiwan, 1993, pl. 153; one included in the Min Chiu Society exhibition, Monochrome Ceramics of Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1977, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 95; one with a pale café-au-lait glaze in the Percival David Foundation, illustrated in the Catalogue, Section 6, no. B597; and another, previously from the K. W. Woollcombe-Boyce Collection (no. 17) and the E. G. Kostolany Collection, was sold in our London Rooms, The Lorant Goldschlager Collection, 4 June 1973, lot 210, and illustrated by A. du Boulay, Christie's Pictorial History of Chinese Ceramics, Oxford, 1984, p. 223, fig. 14.