XUANDE SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE WITHIN A DOUBLE CIRCLE AND OF THE PERIOD (1426-1435)

A nearly identical Xuande-marked bowl of this design and size is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, pp.324-325, no. 135; another example is in the British Museum, illustrated by Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics, London, 2001, p.133, no. 4:24; and a third was sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 8 October 2014, lot 3694.
Most other Xuande-marked bowls of this form belong to a smaller size group, measuring approximately 17.4 cm. in diameter, and are painted with a lotus scroll on the exterior. Several of such examples are in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, one of which is illustrated ibid., pp. 322-323, no. 134; one in the British Museum, ibid., p. 133, no. 4:25; and another in the Tianminlou Collection, illustrated in Chinese Porcelain: The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, part 1, Hong Kong, 1987, no. 21.
The current bowl is closely modelled after the Yongle prototype, such as a bowl of nearly identical size and design in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, see Pleasingly Pure and Lustrous: Porcelains from the Yongle Reign (1403-1424) of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 2007, p. 73 (fig. 1), illustrated opposite to another Yongle bowl of the same decoration with the exception of the band of waves around the inner rim, ibid., p. 74.