Compare the truncated meiping of this type painted with similar, though smaller, peony sprays as well as hovering insects in the Hakone Art Museum, Japan illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. 1, Tokyo, 1976, no. 522 and included in the exhibition Freedom of Clay and Brush through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz'u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis Museum of Art, November 17, 1980-January 18, 1981, illustrated by Mino in the Catalogue, pl. 87, where meiping of this type and their dating is discussed, and where an example from the Sano Museum, Japan, with leaves similar to the present lot is also illustrated. Others, also painted with peony sprays, but with variations in the leaves or blossoms are in the Chang Foundation, illustrated by James Spencer, Selected Chinese Ceramics from Han to Qing Dynasties, Taiwan, 1990, no. 48; and in the National Museum, Tokyo, illustrated by Mary Tregear, Song Ceramics, New York, 1982, no. 87, p. 90, where the author states that the motifs and style of the decoration is found at Guantaizhen and Dong'aikoucun at Cizhou

Compare, also, the example sold in these rooms, March 23, 1995, lot 348