HONGWU PERIOD (1368-1398)

The present dish is an extremely rare example of large blue and white lobed dishes from the Hongwu period, and it seems to be the only dish of this type that has appeared at auction recently. The only other example from this group of the same pattern was excavated at Zhushan Jingdezhen, and is illustrated in Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain excavated at Jingdezhen, Taipei, 1996, pp. 116-117, no. 26 (45.6 cm. diam.)(fig. 1). The Qing Court collection has a few similar dishes with lobed rims but different decorations. The closest examples are two dishes with the same subsidiary motifs but chrysanthemums to the centre in blue and white, one is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, accession number: guci-016610 (44.5 cm. diam.)(fig. 2), the other is in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (I), Hong Kong, 2000, p. 23, no. 21 (45.5 cm. diam.). Compare also to two further lobed dishes painted with composite floral sprays on the cavetto and exterior, and a band of classic scroll on the everted rim, one with peonies and chrysanthemum to the centre (44.8 cm. diam.), the other larger and with peonies and rock to the centre (55.8 cm. diam.), see ibid., nos. 20 and 22, respectively. The underglaze-blue decoration on the present dish is of a rich and even dark blue tone, a quality that is rarely seen on Hongwu blue and white dishes which tend to have a duller and blackish tone.
Large lobed dishes from the Hongwu period were also decorated using underglaze-red, often with a similar pattern to that found on the blue and white counterpart. See for example, a dish painted with nearly identical subsidiary bands but with chrysanthemum to the centre (45.2 cm. diam.) from the Manno Art Museum, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 28 October 2002, lot 525 (fig. 3), then acquired by the Meiyintang Collection, and sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 7 April 2011, lot 43.