A Yongle-marked white anhua-decorated stembowl of this form and size, with the design too faint to be deciphered, excavated at the Imperial kilns, was included in the Hong Kong Museum exhibition, Imperial Porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande Periods, 1989, Catalogue, no. 1. Lin Xinyuan, the archaeologist who led the excavation found the piece in the early Yongle stratum, notes ibid., pp. 58-59, that ninety-eight percent of the Yongle imperial wares found in this stratum were white wares. Many were stembowls with Yongle marks in the centre, either undecorated or with one of three designs, including dragons. He goes on to discuss the innovative translucent 'sweet white' porcelain favoured by the Emperor Yongle to copper-red admired by Hongwu.

Liu Xinyuan explains that the Yongle period is the first in which reign marks were used on porcelain. These marks were either impressed or incised in seal script within a circle.
Cf. with other identical stembowls, from the Brankston collection, illustrated in Ayers, Far Eastern Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1980, col. pl. 43; and another included in Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, 1987, pl. 158.

(US$200,000-280,000)