AN EARLY MING BLUE AND WHITE DISH

Details
AN EARLY MING BLUE AND WHITE DISH
YONGLE

Painted in strong tones on the interior with a bouquet of lotus flowers, leaves, a seed-pod and other aquatic plants tied with a fluttering ribbon, encircled by three concentric rings below a continuous band of flower and foliage scrolls including hibiscus, chrysanthemum, peony, rose, lotus and camellia, and a classic scroll band around the rim, the exterior with a further floral scroll comprising seven pairs of flowers between key-pattern around the foot and a classic scroll border below the lipped rim, the base unglazed (old breaks restuck)
12 3/8 in. (31.4 cm.) diam., box

Lot Essay

Early Ming dishes of this pattern were sold in these Rooms, 26 September 1989, lot 565; and in our London Rooms, 10 December 1990, lot 165.

Compare also with several Ming dishes painted with the lotus bouquet illustrated in Ming & Ch'ing Porcelain from the Collection of the T.Y. Chao Family Foundation, Catalogue, pl. 4; in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Special Exhibition of Early Ming Porcelain, Catalogue, fig. 39 which is a variation with a wave band on the interior mouth rim; another from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, illustrated by He Li, Chinese Ceramics, pl. 397; and one from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, illustrated by Carswell, Blue and White, fig. 21, where it is noted that this dish exemplified the stylistic break with the fourteenth-century style by decorating with a more naturalistic feeling as seen in the asymmetrical arrangement of the central bouquet.

(US$16,000-24,000)

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