AN EXQUISITE DOUCAI 'NARCISSUS' DISH
ANOTHER PROPERTY
AN EXQUISITE DOUCAI 'NARCISSUS' DISH

Details
AN EXQUISITE DOUCAI 'NARCISSUS' DISH
YONGZHENG SIX-CHARACTER MARK WITHIN DOUBLE-CIRCLES AND OF THE PERIOD (1723-1735)

The centre delicately painted and enamelled with narcissus with tall pointed leaves springing up from bulbs planted in moss picked out in two tones of green beside multi-coloured lingzhi amid garden rockwork in shades of sapphire blue all below an arched branch issuing red nandina, the reverse with three clusters of rock, including, bamboo and lingzhi, narcissus and fruiting nandina, all within double-line borders
8 1/8 in. (20.7 cm.) diam.
Provenance
A Japanese Private Collection
Exhibited
Min Xin No Bijutsu, Osaka Municipal Museum, Heibunsha, February 1982, no. 160.

Lot Essay

A dish of this pattern was included in the exhibition, The Hundred Flowers. Botanical Motifs in Chinese Art, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 1985, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 46; where this decorative combination has been identified by T. Bartholomew as forming a rebus. The narcissus (shuixian), rocks (shoushi), and the sacred fungus (lingzhi) form the pun for "zhixian zhushou" or "fungus fairy bestows birthday greeting".

Compare to a similar example illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. I, p. 335, no. 1065; and another from the Chang Foundation, Taipei, is included by James Spencer, Selected Chinese Ceramics from Han to Qing Dynasties, Taipei, 1990, pl. 137.

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