Page 49 - Bonhams Asian Art London November 5, 2020

來源：英國格拉斯哥Leonard Gow（1859-1936）
舊藏，藏品編號411
倫敦蘇富比，1950年12月15日，拍品編號47
Robert Stanley Hope Smith（1910-1979）舊藏，
藏品編號R31，並由後人保存迄今

出版：R.L.Hobson，「Catalogue of the Leonard
Gow Collection of Chinese Porcelain」，倫
敦，1931年，頁101

展覽：格拉斯哥美術館及博物館，編號E6-’36rs及
E6-’36rt（標籤）

Leonard Gow (1859-1936), born in Glasgow,
Scotland, was the son of a shipping magnate also
called Leonard Gow (1824-1910), who established
the Glen Line to trade between London, Singapore,
China and Japan. Leonard junior eventually became
the senior partner in the shipping company Gow,
Harrison & Co., a director of Burmah Oil, and
chairman of several other companies. A noted
philanthropist, Gow established in 1919 a lectureship
in the Medical Diseases in Infancy and Childhood
at Glasgow University, where he had studied moral
philosophy. Glasgow University presented Gow with
an honorary doctorate degree in law in 1934. Gow
built one of the finest collections of Qing ceramics
in the early years of the 20th century, which gained
international recognition through a series of ten
articles by R.L.Hobson in The Burlington Magazine
and through Hobson’s catalogue, which Gow
published privately in a limited edition of 300 copies
in 1931. Part of his collection was exhibited in the
Glasgow Art Gallery.

One dish has an underglaze-blue mark of a brush
(bi), an ingot (ding) and a ruyi-sceptre, tied with
ribbons, forming the rebus bi ding ruyi signifying
‘may all certainly be as you wish’.

Compare with a slightly smaller dish (17.1cm) in
the Palace Museum collection, Beijing, illustrated
in Porcelains with Cloisonné Enamel Decoration
and Famille Rose Decoration, Hong Kong, 1999,
p.74. See two other dishes in the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, nos.640-1907 and 649-1907.

Compare with a very similar famille rose ‘ladies’ dish,
Yongzheng, which was sold at Sotheby’s London,
17 November 2017, lot 213. 39