A fine and rare blue and white 'dragon' dice bowl mark and period of Xuande

heavily-potted with deep rounded sides and flat-cut rim, the exterior finely painted in vivid tones of underglaze blue with characteristic 'heaping and piling', with two five-clawed dragons chasing one another through stylised cloud scrolls between a band of crashing waves at the rim and rising lappets at the foot, the base unglazed, the interior painted in the well with a six-character mark in underglaze-blue within a double circle  

Sotheby's London, 13th December 1977, lot 472.

Blue-and-white dragon bowls of this thickly potted type and of Xuande mark and period are in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complate Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (I), Shanghai, 2000, pl. 124; in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsuan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, National Palace Museum,Taipei, 1998, cat.no. 37; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, illustrated in John Ayers, Far Eastern Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1980, pl. 148; and in the Percival David Foundation, London, and in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., published in Oriental Ceramics. The World's Great Collections, vol. 6, Tokyo, 1982, pl. 97, and vol. 9, Tokyo, 1981, pl. 104, respectively.

Compare also an experimental blue-and-white bowl of the same design but slightly more tapering in form, unglazed on the inside, and with a six-character Xuande mark below the waves around the rim, discovered at the waste heaps of the Jingdezhen kilns and included in the exhibition Imperial Porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande Periods Excavated from the Site of the Ming Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen, Hong Kong, 1989, cat.no. 84.

A bowl of this form included in the exhibition Blue and White, M.F.E.A., Stockholm, 1964, cat.no. 31 and on loan at the M.F.E.A. between 1964-1974, was sold in our London rooms, 6th April 1976, lot 116; and another from the Wu Lai-hsi collection was also sold in our London rooms, 26th May 1937, lot 52, and again, 8th May 1951, lot 69.