Lot Essay
Both the subject matter, depicting a single long-tailed bird in slight relief, and the inclusion of a single seal mark, appear to be relatively rare in Zhangzhou ceramics. Other examples with similar indecipherable sealmarks may be found but these are usually repeated four times on the dish or bowl and are not used as a single sealmark, as in the present lot. See the saucer-shaped dishes with four seals illustrated in Toji Taikei, Heibonsha Series, vol. 45, colour plate 12; another by Krahl and Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Seray Museum, Istanbul, vol. II, no. 1940, p. 895; and a further example is in the Museum Pusat, Jakarta, illustrated in The World's Great Collections, Oriental Ceramics, Kodansha Series, Tokyo, New York and San Francisco, 1982, fig. 251.