EIGHT SMALL BLUE AND WHITE DISHES

CHONGZHEN PERIOD, CIRCA 1643

Details

EIGHT SMALL BLUE AND WHITE DISHES
CHONGZHEN PERIOD, CIRCA 1643
Each small dish has a foliate rim and is delicately decorated with a different narrative scene from The Romance of the Western Chamber and other literary sources. The reverse of each is decorated with a continuous river landscape and is inscribed with an apocryphal Jiajing mark on the base.
3 ½ in. (8.9 cm.) diam.

Provenance

The Property of Captain Michael Hatcher; Christie's Amsterdam, 14 March 1984, lot 200 (part), lot 201 (part).
Collection of Julia and John Curtis.

Literature

Julia B. Curtis, “Transitionware Made Plain: A Wreck in the South China Sea,” Oriental Art, Volume XXXI, No. 2, Summer, 1985, pp. 169-170, figs. 13, 16,17, 18 a,b.
Colin Sheaf and Richard Kilburn, The Hatcher Porcelain Cargoes, The Complete Record, London, 1988, p. 66, pl. 97 (four).
Julia B. Curtis, “La porcelaine chinoise de Transition,” La porcelaine chinoise de Transition: et ses influences sur la céramique japonaise, proche-orientale et européenne, Geneva, 1993, no. 7.

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Margaret Gristina

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Lot Essay

This interesting group of dishes is decorated with a variety of scenes that most likely derive from popular novels, as well as one generic scene with a scholar and attendant, and one showing four immortals. Two scenes can be directly compared to woodblock illustrations from The Romance of the Western Chamber. The small dish with two ladies in a garden depicts the heroine Yinying offering incense in honor of her deceased uncle. (fig. 1) Another direct comparison can be drawn between the small dish decorated with a lady seated on a garden rock beneath a tree and a woodblock illustration with the scene known as 'Repudiation of the billet-doux’. (fig. 2)

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