AN EXTREMELY RARE GREEN-ENAMELLED CAFE-AU-LAIT GROUND 'DRAGON' BOWL

Details

AN EXTREMELY RARE GREEN-ENAMELLED CAFE-AU-LAIT GROUND 'DRAGON' BOWL
GREEN ENAMEL JIAJING SIX-CHARACTER MARK WITHIN DOUBLE CIRCLES AND OF THE PERIOD (1522-1566)

The bowl is unusually decorated in bright green enamel with a dragon and a phoenix in mutual pursuit around the exterior, and on the interior, naturalistic scenes of cranes in flight and perched on branches of pine, framed within the central medallion and extended around the well, all against a coffee-brown ground, including the base where the mark has been inscribed in enamel (several small enamel flakes)
6 in. (15.2 cm.) diam., box

Provenance

Manno Art Museum, no. 388.

Literature

Toji Taikei, Min no Akae, vol. 43, Ryoichi Fujioka, Heibonshi, 1972, col. pls. 17 and 18.
Sekai Toji Zenshu, Vol. 14, Japan, 1976, pl. 194.

Lot Essay

Only one other Jiajing-marked bowl of this design and in this palette appears to be published in Masterpieces of Chinese and Korean Ceramics in the Ataka Collection, pl. 115; previously from the Seligsberg Collection, sold in New York, 13 March 1975, lot 326.

Compare also the bowl in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which is decorated with cranes in white slip under a coffee-brown glaze, and with a Jiajing reign mark, illustrated by S. Jenyns, Ming Pottery and Porcelain, London, pl. 91B.

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