Page 285 - Decorative Arts, Part II: Far Eastern Ceramics and Paintings, Persian and Indian Rugs and Carpets

1972.43.62 (C-617)

Dish

Japanese, nineteenth century
Porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze enamels,
1
3.2 x 22.9 (\ A xp)
Harry G. Steele Collection, Gift of Grace C. Steele

INSCRIPTIONS
Spuriously inscribed in standard script on the base in underglaze
blue in two columns of three characters each: Da Ming Wanli
nian zhi [made in the Wanli reign of the great Ming dynasty]

TECHNICAL NOTES
The foot-ring is rounded, with a glazed base. There are four
spur marks on the base.

PROVENANCE
(Parish-Watson Gallery, New York); sold December 1940 to
Harry G. Steele [1881-1941], Pasadena; his widow, Grace C. Steele.

HIS DISH is A COPY of a Chinese dish of the Ming-
Tdynasty Wanli period (1573-1620). At the interior
center is a scene of two scholars and an attendant in a
garden. The cavetto is decorated with a scroll of eight
rwy/'-shaped flowers and with stylized characters reading
shou (longevity). The exterior is decorated with eight
floral sprays and a scroll border above the foot.
Although the colors of the overglaze green, red, and
yellow enamels and underglaze cobalt oxide pigment are
close to those of the Wanli period, the later date and
Japanese origin are confirmed by the overly white clay
body, the thin glaze, and the presence of spur marks on
the base, which are not characteristic of Chinese porce-
1
lain. Furthermore, the forms of the Taihu rocks and the
tripartite mountain in the background of the scene in
the interior imitate models from the mid-seventeenth-
century Chinese transitional period, which followed the
death of the Wanli emperor. SL
foot-ring and reignmark
on base of 1972.43.62
NOTES
i. For a nineteenth-century Japanese copy of a Chinese blue-
and-white porcelain vessel of the Wanli period, see Hayashiya
1975, pi. 226.

P O R C E L A I N S 269