QIANLONG PERIOD (1736-1795)

The inclusion of The Eight Buddhist Emblems in the decoration of these dishes indicates that they, and others like them, would have been used on an altar to hold offerings during Buddhist religious ceremonies. A pair of later date, bearing an inscription dated to the sixteenth year of Guangxu (1890), with a somewhat different dish shape, and with different decoration, in the Clague Collection, Phoenix Art Museum, is illustrated by Bèatrice Quette (ed.) Cloisonné: Chinese Enamel from the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, Bard Graduate Center, New York, 2011, p. 299, no. 145. The inscription on these dishes states that they were made as an "offering vessel for the Loyi Hall."