Page 59 - 2019 September 11th Sotheby's Important Chinese Art

With its white reserve decoration on a cobalt-blue ground, A similar dish in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
this pattern seems to be ultimately based on prototypes York, is illustrated in Suzanne G. Valenstein, A Handbook of
of the Xuande period with a single flower spray in the Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989, pl. 248. The Meiyintang
center, such as a dish in the National Palace Museum, Collection also contains a blue and white dish, together with
Taipei, included in the Museum’s exhibition Mingdai Xuande a bowl, decorated in the same technique, and a similar dish
guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu/Catalogue of the Special with the design colored in yellow, see Regina Krahl, Chinese
Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-
Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, pl. 193. A somewhat closer 2010, vol. 2, nos 843, 842 and 844; the Meiyintang dish,
design was developed in the Wanli reign, with four flowers formerly in the collections of Edward G. Kennedy and Edward
in the center, for example, on a dish in the Palace Museum, Kennedy Torrington, was acquired at Christie’s New York,
Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures 2nd December 1989, lot 370, and sold in our Hong Kong
of the Palace Museum. Blue and White Porcelain with rooms, 7th April 2011, lot 75. A further example sold in the
Underglazed Red, Shanghai, 2000, vol. 2, pl. 195. same rooms, 3rd April 2018, lot 3617.
The early Ming design was also copied more closely in the
Yongzheng period, as can be seen on a dish in the Shanghai
Museum illustrated in Lu Minghua, Mingdai guanyao ciqi
[Ming imperial porcelain], Shanghai, 2007, pl. 5-33. Whereas
both the Xuande prototype and the Shanghai Museum
Yongzheng version are covered with an even, dark cobalt-
blue glaze, the Wanli example has the ground painted in
underglaze cobalt blue, and on the present dish the pigment
was blown onto the vessel through a tube covered with
gauze, which produced this finely speckled powder-blue
effect.

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