A rare brown-glazed 'chrysanthemum' dish Mark and Period of Yongzheng

crisply moulded in the form of a chrysanthemum flower, with forty-four fluted petals forming the sides gently curving upwards to the foliate rim, the lobing continuing to the exterior of the wide foot, covered overall with a lustrous coffee-brown glaze, thinning on the raised surfaces to highlight the decoration, the base reserved in white with the six-character mark inscribed within a double circle in underglaze-blue

A full set of twelve Yongzheng chrysanthemum dishes, including one with a similar coffee-brown glaze, was included in the exhibition China. The Three Emperors, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2005, pl. 172. Palace records show that in 1733 the Yongzheng emperor ordered Nian Xiyao, then superintendent of the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen, to make twelve differently coloured chrysanthemum-shaped dishes. Records further show that Nian delivered forty pieces of each colour. (Regina Krahl, ibid., p. 431)

Compare a powder-blue dish of this form and size sold in these rooms, 26th October 2003, lot 54; and another in coral-red glaze illustrated in John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, vol. 2, geneva, 1999, pl. 333.