A very rare copper-red bowl Ming Dynasty, Hongwu period

well potted with deep rounded sides sitting on a short foot rising to an everted rim, painted overall in greyish-red tones of copper-red, the interior with a central medallion of a lotus spray with a double line border, the cavetto with six chrysanthemum blooms on a meandering leafy stem, below a keyfret border at the rim, the exterior similarly decorated with six lotus blooms below a classic scroll border at the rim and with a keyfret band encircling the foot

Su Lin An Collection.

Several underglaze-red bowls of this form and design are recorded although they all appear to have keyfret rim borders instead of the classic scroll as seen on the present example. See a bowl from the Qing court collection illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (I), Shanghai, 2000, pl. 222; one in the Shandong Provincial Museum included in Zhongguo wenwu jinghua daquan. Taoci juan, Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 667; a third published in the Illustrated Catalogue of Tokyo National Museum. Chinese Ceramics II, Tokyo, 1990, cat.no. 32; and a bowl from the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, illustrated in The 15th Anniversary Catalogue, Tokyo, 1981, cat.no. 760. 

Compare also a bowl of this design but with the keyfret rim, from the Henry Young collection in the Hong Kong Museum of Art, included in the exhibition Jingdezhen wares. The Yuan evolution, Fung Ping Shan Museum, Hong Kong, 1984, cat.no. 150; another bowl from the collections of J.F. Bloxam and Stephen D. Winkworth, sold in our London rooms, 26th April 1933, lot 363; and one sold in these rooms, 30th April 1991, lot 9A, and illustrated in Sotheby's Hong Kong Twenty Years, Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 35.