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Lot Essay
Previously sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 5 November 1997, lot 1366.
Yongle dishes of this design are very rare. Only two examples have been published: one of slightly larger size, in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, listed in Gugong Ciqi Lu, part II, vol. III, 1964, p. 98; and the other, from the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated by Geng Baochang, Ming Qing Ciqi Jianding, Hong Kong, 1993, fig. 7, together with a Hongwu prototype of this pattern, fig. 6.
The three-cloud decoration on the central medallion appears on early Ming dishes from as early as the Hongwu period. Geng Baochang provides line drawings of the different styles of the same design during the Hongwu, Yongle, Xuande, Zhengde and Wanli reigns, ibid., p. 17, fig. 22. Compare the present lot to a blue and white dish with comparable design of clouds and anhua dragons on the interior, dated to about 1400, and from the collection of Mrs Alfred Clark, illustrated by S. Jenyns, Ming Pottery and Porcelain, London, 1953, pl. 24A. Cf. also a Yongle dish similarly decorated on the inside, but with two moulded phoenix around the cavetto and phoenix and clouds on the exterior, recovered from the excavation site of the Ming imperial kilns at Zhushan, included in the 1996 Chang Foundation exhibition Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 49.
A Xuande version of this design from the collections of Major Lindsay F. Hay, Frederick M. Mayer and T. Y. Chao, was included in the exhibition Ming and Ch'ing Porcelain from the Collection of the T. Y. Chao Family Foundation, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1978, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 15.
Yongle dishes of this design are very rare. Only two examples have been published: one of slightly larger size, in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, listed in Gugong Ciqi Lu, part II, vol. III, 1964, p. 98; and the other, from the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated by Geng Baochang, Ming Qing Ciqi Jianding, Hong Kong, 1993, fig. 7, together with a Hongwu prototype of this pattern, fig. 6.
The three-cloud decoration on the central medallion appears on early Ming dishes from as early as the Hongwu period. Geng Baochang provides line drawings of the different styles of the same design during the Hongwu, Yongle, Xuande, Zhengde and Wanli reigns, ibid., p. 17, fig. 22. Compare the present lot to a blue and white dish with comparable design of clouds and anhua dragons on the interior, dated to about 1400, and from the collection of Mrs Alfred Clark, illustrated by S. Jenyns, Ming Pottery and Porcelain, London, 1953, pl. 24A. Cf. also a Yongle dish similarly decorated on the inside, but with two moulded phoenix around the cavetto and phoenix and clouds on the exterior, recovered from the excavation site of the Ming imperial kilns at Zhushan, included in the 1996 Chang Foundation exhibition Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 49.
A Xuande version of this design from the collections of Major Lindsay F. Hay, Frederick M. Mayer and T. Y. Chao, was included in the exhibition Ming and Ch'ing Porcelain from the Collection of the T. Y. Chao Family Foundation, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1978, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 15.