Page 128 - 2019 OctoberSur Quo Wei Lee Collectim Important Chinese Art Hong Kong

Blue and white chargers of this shape and design represent illustrated in Regina Krahl and John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics
the most classic decorative repertoire during the Yongle in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, London, 1986, vol. II,
period. The lotus-bouquet motif, with its unexpected no. 604; and thirty-four dishes of varying sizes decorated with
combination of lotus flowers, leaves and water weeds, tied the lotus-bouquet design recorded in the Ardabil Shrine, Iran,
with a ribbon, evokes strikingly coloured lotus ponds in full illustrated in John Alexander Pope, Chinese Porcelains from
bloom during summer. Such design was often executed with the Ardebil Shrine, Washington, D.C., 1956, pls 30 and 31.
slight variations on the rim which could vary between a wave,
The design was revived again by the imperial kilns during
classic scroll or key-fret border. Compare a similar charger
the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods of the Qing dynasty;
rendered in this design from the National Palace Museum,
compare three revival dishes in the Palace Museum, Beijing,
Taipei, included in the Museum’s exhibition Shi yu xin:
illustrated in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang
Mingdai Yongle huangdi de ciqi/Pleasingly Pure and Lustrous:
Ming chu qinghua ci [Early Ming blue-and-white porcelain in
Porcelains from the Yongle Reign (1403-1424) of the Ming
the Palace Museum], Beijing, 2002, vol. II, pls 195, 199 and
Dynasty, Taipei, 2017, p. 67.
203.
These dishes or chargers were made popular and were widely For an early version of this motif, see a Cizhou octagonal
exported to the Middle East with the expansion of trade routes pillow carved in the sgraffiato technique, from the Manno Art
during the Yongle reign, as demonstrated by the abundance Museum, sold at Christie’s Paris, 19th November 2003, lot
of such examples in the Middle Eastern collections. See a dish
224.