Lot Essay
This unusual type of reverse decoration is a very distinctive technique of the Jiajing period. With the exception of only one other Jiajing-marked bowl of this size and decoration, sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 19 November 1986, lot 212, no other bowl-form examples are known. Compare three dishes similarly decorated with cranes in flight below a shou (longevity) character: the first is in the Idemitsu Museum collection illustrated in Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, vol. II, Tokyo, 1987, no. 706; a dish formerly in the Avery Brundage collection, now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, illustrated by He Li, Chinese Ceramics, A New Comprehensive Survey, 1996, no. 421, p. 244; and another dish sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 27 October 2003, lot 618. A related Jiajing period bowl with an anhua decorated dragon against a blue-ground is in the Idemitsu Museum, illustrated op. cit., 1987, col. pl. 194.