Page 65 - Ming Porcelain Auction March 14, 2017 Sotheby's, NYC

2002 C onical bowls of this fruit-and- ower design can be counted among the
most successful blue and white bowl patterns of the early Ming dynasty
2 146 and belong to the classic repertoire of the Xuande (1426-35) imperial
kilns. They re ect the newly awakened interest of the Chinese court in ne blue
179 and white porcelains. Whereas Yongle (1403-24) blue and white is still character-
ized by many large items created for export, in the Xuande reign the products
1980 36 of the imperial workshops were geared for the imperial house both in size and in
1998 taste, exquisitely nished and inscribed with the imperial reign mark.
62
A bowl of this design in the Palace Museum, Beijing, from the Qing court
K L Dawes J F Woodthorpe Frederick collection, is illustrated in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang Ming
M Mayer 1949 5 chu qinghua ci [Early Ming blue and white porcelain in the Palace Museum],
20 84 1954 4 6 Beijing, 2002, vol. 2, pl. 146, where it is stated that this design was frequently
90 copied in the Kangxi (1662-1722) and Yongzheng (1723-35) periods, and where
1974 6 25 90 a Xuande-marked copy attributed to the Kangxi reign is illustrated, pl. 179; two
such bowls in the National Palace Museum were included in the Museum’s
exhibitions Ming Xuande ciqi tezhan mulu/Catalogue of a Special Exhibition of
Hsuan-te Period Porcelain, Taipei, 1980, no.36, and Mingdai Xuande guanyao
jinghua tezhan tulu/Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te
Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, no. 62.