Previously sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 29 October 2001, lot 593.

It is unusual to find bowls of this pattern with a ruby-ground as they are more often found with a coral-red background. It is highly possible that the present bowl is the same one sold at Sotheby's London, 29 November 1978, lot 371. The only other comparable example rendered with a ruby-ground is the bowl from the E. C. Blake Collection, previously sold in our London Rooms, 1 November 1982, lot 229, and sold again at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 26 October 2003, lot 120. The Blake bowl, however, bears a four-character Yongzheng mark within double squares unlike the six-character mark on the present bowl.

The same design of flowers is found on shallow rounded ruby-ground bowls of various sizes with both nianzhi and yuzhi marks. A small bowl, 7.2 cm. diam., with a four-character reign mark within a double square was included in the Exhibition of Ming and Ch'ing Porcelain from the Collection of the T. Y. Chao Family Foundation, Hong Kong, 1978, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 99.