青花歲寒三友紋盌　　雙圈雙行六字楷書款

The design of the 'Three Friends of Winter', bamboo, prunus and pine became popular on porcelain of the Chenghua period (1465-1487) and continued as a favoured pattern through to the late Qing period.

A Kangxi-marked blue and white teapot with a similar decoration of 'three friends' is in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Selected Porcelain of the Flourishing Qing Dynasty at the Palace Museum, Beijing, 1994, p. 48, no. 6.