JIAJING-WANLI PERIOD, 16TH-17TH CENTURY

The phrase, fu shou kang ning, is a birthday wish for good fortune, long life, good health and peace, and appears frequently on porcelains of the Jiajing and Wanli periods. The characters are sometimes inscribed on the base, such as on the present rare ewer, or they sometimes form the decoration of the vessel, such as the Wanli-marked bowl sold at Christie's New York, 16-17 September 2010, lot 1323, where the characters are formed by the twisted trunks of a pine tree, a prunus tree, a chrysanthemum stem and bamboo.