Page 86 - Christies IMportant Chinese Art Sept 26 2020 NYC

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF LENORA AND WALTER F. BROWN
1547
A LARGE AND RARE BLUE AND WHITE DISH
YONGLE PERIOD (1403-1425)
The dish is decorated in rich cobalt blue characteristically 'heaped and This type of dish was a very popular export to India and the Middle
piled' with chrysanthemum scroll within a shaped border, beneath East, as evidenced by the large numbers published in collections in
peony scroll in the well and further scroll on the everted rim. The Istanbul and Tehran, and the large number of copies made locally in
reverse is decorated with further flower blossoms. earthenware. They are found with a variety of floral decorations and
sizes, with rounded wells, everted rounded rims and barbed rims. For
15æ in. (40 cm.) diam.
a discussion of the Asian empires that prized these dishes, see the
note to lot 1551 in this catalogue, an important blue and white barbed
$200,000-300,000
‘lotus’ dish with the collector’s mark of the fifth Mughal emperor,
Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658).
PROVENANCE:
Sotheby Parke Bernet Ltd., Hong Kong, 24 November 1981, lot 75.
The Lenora and Walter F. Brown Collection, San Antonio, Texas. It is extremely rare to find a Yongle dish decorated with a continuous
vine around the everted rim rather than cresting waves such as
EXHIBITED: the present dish. The border on this dish is particularly beautifully
Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Private Eye: Selected rendered, incorporating ruyi heads in the vine. A related dish of the
Works from Collections of Friends of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, same size, with a similar decorative scheme and a vine around the
11 June-13 August 1989. rim, from The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, was sold at
Christie’s New York, 19 March 2009, lot 712. An example of the more
明永樂 青花纏枝四季花卉菊花靈芝紋折沿大盤 commonly found version with cresting wave border on the everted rim
was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 29 May 2007, lot 1451.
A dish with the same design as the present lot, of slightly smaller
size, is in the Topkapi Saray, Istanbul, and is illustrated in J. Ayers and
R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul,
vol. II, Yuan and Ming Dynasty Porcelain, London, 1986, p. 512, no.
600. Another of slightly smaller size (37.8 cm.) is in The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, accession number 1978.149, and another
of slightly larger size (43.2 cm.) from the Ardebil Shrine, now in the
Iran Bastan Musuem, is illustrated by T. Misugi in Chinese Porcelain
Collections in the Near East: Topkapi and Ardebil, Hong Kong, 1981, p.
119, no. A.35.

(reverse)