YONGLE PERIOD (1403-1425)

The design on this dish is typically described as 'lotus bouquet,' as the majority of the flowers, pods and leaves belong to the auspicious lotus plant. However, the bouquet also includes additional auspicious plants, such as the arrow-shaped saggitaria sagittifolia, a symbol of both generosity and of food in a time of shortage, and a stalk of millet, symbolizing an abundance of grain. Dishes with this 'lotus bouquet' design belong to an important group of early Ming blue and white wares, together with 'grape' dishes, 'melon' dishes, and 'dragon' dishes. See J.A. Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine, Washington, D.C., 1956, p. 92, where he discusses the thirty-four 'bouquet' dishes of varying size and with varying borders in the Ardebil Collection, showing the wide range of intensity of cobalt within the dishes and the diversity of decoration. Some of these variations can be seen, ibid, on pls. 30 and 31.
A dish of this shape and design was excavated from the Yongle stratum of the site of the imperial kiln at Jingdezhen in 1994, and is illustrated in Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1996, pp. 144-5, no. 40. Compare, also, two other dishes of this pattern, but of slightly larger size: one in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, (34.2 cm. diam.), illustrated in Porcelain of the National Palace Museum: Blue-and-White ware of the Ming Dynasty, Book II, Part 2, Hong Kong, 1963, pp. 146-7, pl. 59; and one in The Tianminlou Foundation, (34.7 cm. diam.), illustrated in the catalogue of the Min Chiu Society exhibition, Joined Colors, Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC, 1993, p. 78, no. 7.