This dish belongs to a group of dishes that illustrate scenes from the Shuihu Zhuan (The Water Margin). Kerr illustrates a related dish with a place mark Wen Xin Zhai in Chinese Ceramics Porcelain of the Qing Dynasty 1644-1911, pl. 81 and notes that the artist Chen Hongshou issued a famous edition of this popular novel in 1657. The designs consist of three figures, sometimes with their names as in the case of the present example. Jenyns illustrates one dish with an apocryphal Chenghua mark in Later Chinese Porcelain, pl. XXX pl. 1. Another in the Musee Guimet, Paris is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, Kodansha Series, vol. 7, pl. 121