MING DYNASTY, 15TH CENTURY

Two blue and white censers of similar form, design and size are known. The first one, depicting Daoist figures and dating to the Hongzhi period, is in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (II), Hong Kong, 2000, no. 43. (fig. 1) The same censer is also illustrated by Geng Baochang under the section of Hongzhi porcelain in Mingqing ciqi jianding, Beijing, 1993, p. 106, fig. 195, where he comments on the popularity of this type of censers in the latter half of the 15th century. The second one, decorated with an elderly man on a donkey with other figures, was illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. I, Tokyo, 1976, p. 252, no. 760, and later sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 29 May 2019, lot 2926. It is interesting to note that all three censers, including the current example, have very similar mouth rims decorated with keyfrets, and cabriole feet painted with floral motifs. The considerably free and fluid painting style seen on these three examples is also strikingly similar.