YONGZHENG SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE WITHIN A DOUBLE CIRCLE AND OF THE PERIOD (1723-1735)

The style of decoration on this dish, which shows a flowering branch over the rim, is known as guozhihua, 'flowering branch passing over (the rim)'. It was first developed at the end of the Ming dynasty in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. However, it was not until the Yongzheng period that this guozhihua style of decoration seems to have been most popular. It was especially favoured at court which is shown in Imperial examples such as a larger dish (29.5 cm.) with a slightly different design to the present lot, from the Baur Collection, illustrated by J. Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, vol. 2, Geneva, 1999, pl. 221 [A589]; and a charger (50.6 cm.) sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 28 October 2002, lot 611.
An almost identical dish of Yongzheng mark and period is in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, museum number OM-1977-0138, illustrated by Hobson in The Later Ceramic Wares of China, London, 1924, plate LVII, p. 73.