Page 78 - Important Chinese Art Hong Kong Sotheby's April 2017

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

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