Page 76 - Sothebys Important Chinese Art April 3 2018

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

74 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比