A BLUE AND WHITE 'FLORAL' BOWL

The porcelains of the Xuande period have always been especially admired by Chinese connoisseurs, to the extent that three hundred years later, when the Qianlong Emperor wished to compliment contemporary porcelains, he compared them to those of the Xuande and Chenghua (1465–87) reigns. The Xuande Emperor was an especially enthusiastic patron of porcelain production, and the potters working at the imperial kilns were required to produce an astonishingly wide range of vessel shapes, ranging from huge jars to tiny flower vases for the cages of songbirds. It is especially the blue and white porcelains of the Xuande reign that are considered masterpieces of the potters' art. The underglaze blue designs of the period are admired both for the color of the cobalt blue and for the vitality of the painting, which exhibits remarkable spontaneity and fluidity, as evidenced by the elegant flower scrolls on the present bowl.

The current bowl is finely decorated around the exterior with a continuous design of scrolling stylized lotus blossoms, while the interior cavetto is decorated with five flowers (pomegranate, lotus, tree peony, chrysanthemum, and hollyhock), with continuous scrolling foliage encircling a central lotus spray within a double ring. Each of the flowers would have conveyed a particular meaning to those who saw the bowl—the pomegranate offering joy and protection with its flowers, and implying the promise of many sons through its (unseen) fruit; the lotus symbolizing harmony, beauty, and purity; the peony representing wealth and honor; the chrysanthemum signifying longevity and wealth; and the hollyhock conveying fertility and perseverance.

For a Xuande-marked bowl of similar size and design in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, see Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, pp. 322–3, no. 134. Other examples include the bowl in the British Museum, London, illustrated by J. Harrison-Hall in Ming Ceramics, London, 2001, p. 133, no. 4:25; the bowl from the Tianminlou Collection illustrated in Chinese Porcelain: The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, part 1, Hong Kong, 1987, no. 22, and subsequently sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 3 April 2019, lot 10; and the bowl sold at Christie’s New York, 20 September 2024, lot 1039.