A RARE LARGE MING BLUE AND WHITE 'BOYS' BOWL

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Details

A RARE LARGE MING BLUE AND WHITE 'BOYS' BOWL
JIAJING SIX-CHARACTER MARK WITHIN A DOUBLE CIRCLE AND OF THE PERIOD (1522-1566)

Painted in purplish-blue tones around the exterior with a scene depicting sixteen boys on a balustraded terrace with ornamental trees and rocks, the boys grouped in sets of four playing chess, grasping fish from a fish bowl, practising calligraphy and pulling a cart, the interior medallion with a further group of four boys flying a kite and playing with a top, all flanked by double-line borders with a further band of ruyi heads above the foot (restored rim chips)
14 1/4 in. (36.3 cm.) diam.

Provenance

The British Rail Pension Fund, sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 16 May 1989, lot 21.

Exhibited

On loan at the Dallas Museum of Art, 1985-1988

Lot Essay

Jiajing-marked bowls of this decoration come in varying sizes, this example is the largest. A bowl of this size but with a slightly different composition in the Museum Pusat, Jakarta, is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, 1982, vol 3, no. 223. A bowl of smaller size (30.7 cm. diam.) formerly from the Sir Harry Garner collection, included in the exhibition Ming Blue-and-White Porcelain, Oriental Ceramics Society, London, 1946, is illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 68 and again by J. Ayers, Chinese Ceramics: The Koger Collection, no. 82. Compare also earlier examples of this design dating to the Chenghua period, illustrated by J. Ayers, Far Eastern Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum, no. 49.

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