Page 16 - 2018 Hong Kong Important Chieese Art

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

14 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比