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Lot Essay
The delicate shallow dish is painted on the interior with the ‘Three Friends of Winter’- a gnarled pine tree, lush bamboo stems and an angular prunus tree, accompanied by a lingzhi spray and a three-pronged rock. The reverse is decorated with a continuous scene of the same motifs repeated twice.
Xuande blue and white dishes of this design are exceptionally rare in private hands, with majority preserved in institutional collections, most notably the collections of Palace Museum, Taipei and Beijing, suggesting their status as imperial court commissions.
The 'Three Friends of Winter' has long been an revered motif in Chinese visual culture, as the pine, bamboo, and plum blossom collectively embody resilience and noble virtues of scholars and literati who aim to flourish despite adversity. Favored by scholarly circles, this auspicious group was widely depicted across various artistic media. This classic composition remained in popularity and continued in production in subsequent Ming reigns and throughout the Qing dynasty, including the Chenghua (1464-1487), Qianlong (1736-1795), and Jiaqing (1796-1820) periods.
While comparable examples feature this triadic motif within the interior medallion, the present dish is exceptionally rare in carrying the same subject on its exterior. An almost identical example, slightly smaller in size (17.8 cm.), rendered in a softer cobalt blue tone, formerly in the collection of Sir John M Addis, is preserved in the British Museum, registration no. 1975,1028.17. Another closely related dish is in the collection of the Palace Museum, Taipei, which differs in its scroll-bordered rim and incised dragons on the cavetto, collection no. guci006319N (fig. 1). More frequently, dishes decorated with the 'Three Friends of Winter' on the interior feature figural scenes on the reverse. A similar-sized Xuande dish depicting ladies in a garden on the exterior is in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (I), Hong Kong, 2000, p. 142, no. 134.
The present dish appears to be unique in auction records, as other market comparables are all decorated with figures on the exterior, such as the flared rim dish from the Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Clark Collection, sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 25 April 2004, lot 287. For a related Xuande-marked bowl bearing the same design on the interior, from the same collection as the present dish, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 April 2026, lot 807.
Xuande blue and white dishes of this design are exceptionally rare in private hands, with majority preserved in institutional collections, most notably the collections of Palace Museum, Taipei and Beijing, suggesting their status as imperial court commissions.
The 'Three Friends of Winter' has long been an revered motif in Chinese visual culture, as the pine, bamboo, and plum blossom collectively embody resilience and noble virtues of scholars and literati who aim to flourish despite adversity. Favored by scholarly circles, this auspicious group was widely depicted across various artistic media. This classic composition remained in popularity and continued in production in subsequent Ming reigns and throughout the Qing dynasty, including the Chenghua (1464-1487), Qianlong (1736-1795), and Jiaqing (1796-1820) periods.
While comparable examples feature this triadic motif within the interior medallion, the present dish is exceptionally rare in carrying the same subject on its exterior. An almost identical example, slightly smaller in size (17.8 cm.), rendered in a softer cobalt blue tone, formerly in the collection of Sir John M Addis, is preserved in the British Museum, registration no. 1975,1028.17. Another closely related dish is in the collection of the Palace Museum, Taipei, which differs in its scroll-bordered rim and incised dragons on the cavetto, collection no. guci006319N (fig. 1). More frequently, dishes decorated with the 'Three Friends of Winter' on the interior feature figural scenes on the reverse. A similar-sized Xuande dish depicting ladies in a garden on the exterior is in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (I), Hong Kong, 2000, p. 142, no. 134.
The present dish appears to be unique in auction records, as other market comparables are all decorated with figures on the exterior, such as the flared rim dish from the Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Clark Collection, sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 25 April 2004, lot 287. For a related Xuande-marked bowl bearing the same design on the interior, from the same collection as the present dish, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 April 2026, lot 807.