Lot Essay
There is no obvious precedent for this very unusual dish, with its high-contrast combination of white-glazed center to a brown-glazed body, but a few other coffee-brown-glazed porcelains of Jiajing date have been published. See the pair of plain dishes from the collection of Clifford C.F. Wong included in the Min Chiu Society exhibition, Monochrome Ceramics of Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1977, no. 92; and a coffee-brown Jiajing dish with dragons painted in olive green included in the Society's Thirtieth Anniversary exhibition, Selected Treasures of Chinese Art, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1990, no. 146. The decorative device of an incised dragon, either under the glaze or left in the biscuit, had already been used in the preceding Hongzhi and Zhengde reigns and can be seen on a yellow and green-glazed square bowl incised under the glaze with similar leaping dragons included in the exhibition, Ming Porcelains, 29 October 1970 - 31 January 1971, p. 81, no. 53.