JIAJING SIX-CHARACTER MARK AND OF THE PERIOD (1522-1566)

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 two other 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; and another 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.