Page 20 - Reginald and Lena Palmer Collection EXHIBITION, Bonhams London Oct 25 to November 2 2021

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A BLUE AND WHITE ‘BOYS AT PLAY’ SAUCER DISH
Wanli six-character mark and of the period
28.7cm (11 1/4in) diam.

明萬曆 青花嬰戲圖盤
青花「大明萬曆年製」楷書款

Provenance:
Alfred Clark (1873-1950) and Ivy Clark (1890-1976)
John Sparks Ltd., London
R.H.R Palmer (1898-1970), acquired from the above in July 1949,
Collection no.641

Published and Exhibited:
The Oriental Ceramic Society, Ming Blue-and-White Porcelain, London,
1946, no.66

來源：
Alfred Clark（1873-1950）與Ivy Clark（1890-1976）伉儷舊藏
倫敦古董商John Sparks Ltd.
R.H.R Palmer（1898-1970）於1949年7月購自上者，典藏編號641

展覽著錄：
倫敦東方陶瓷學會，《Ming Blue-and-White Porcelain》，
倫敦，1946年，編號66

The design of ‘boys at play’ is popular in Chinese art and Another painting that would have more directly influenced the present
encapsulates the auspicious Confucian wish for numerous children design is ‘A Children’s Puppet Show’ by Liu Songnian (1174-1224), in
to continue worshiping the ancestors. The Wanli Emperor himself the National Palace Museum, Taipei. This painting shows a table being
fathered eleven sons but three died in infancy. He also fathered turned on its side to create a backdrop for the marionette controlled by
ten daughters, eight of whom died prematurely. His desire to be a child, while another boy drums. Children playing with puppets would
surrounded by auspicious portents of numerous children is therefore have inverted the association with funerals however, and had the
understandable. Indeed, archaeologists even discovered a woman’s meaning of youthfulness dispelling evil and death.
short silk jacket, decorated with the theme of boys at play, in the
Wanli Emperor’s own mausoleum. See a related blue and white dish, Wanli six-character mark and of
the period, in the Sir Percival David collection, in the British Museum,
The boy playing with a puppet is a particularly charming and unusual London, illustrated in Ceramic Evolution in the Middle Ming Period,
subject, although it may have also been topical. The contemporaneous London, 1994, no.55. Another blue and white dish with similar design,
scholar and poet Xu Wei (1521-1593) wrote a poem about puppets: Wanli mark and period, in the Songde Tang collection, is illustrated in
The Fame of Flame: Imperial Wares of the Jiajing and Wanli Period,
The puppets before the curtain are an illusion, Hong Kong, 2009, pl.89.
A painting of puppets is yet even more removed.
If you consider the sky as a canopy or curtain,
Who among us isn’t an actor too?

The theme of puppets touched upon issues of life, illusion, reality
and authenticity, topics much discussed by scholars of the Jiajing
and Wanli periods. In the Ming dynasty novel Jin ping mei (The Plum
in the Golden Vase), puppets are performed at a funeral to entertain
any restless spirits; see W.Dolby, ‘The Origins of Chinese Puppetry’
in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol.41,
no.1 (1978), p.98. That puppet shows were connected to funerals
and death is reinforced by the famous painting ‘Skeleton Fantasy
Show’ in the Palace Museum, Beijing, by the Song dynasty painter
Li Song (1166-1264), which shows a skeleton playing with a puppet
of a skeleton before children. Puppet shows would therefore have
symbolised life and death, reality and illusion.

‘Children at Play’, Song dynasty;
image courtesy of the National
Palace Museum, Taipei

18 | BONHAMS