A Mother-of-pearl Inlaid Black Lacquer 'Scholar and Boy' Lobed Dish Yuan/Ming Dynasty

of lobed form with shallow sides resting on a short foot, the centre intricately inlaid with a tranquil moonlit scene depicting a scholar sitting beneath a willow tree, with a boy facing him and listening, set amid paulownia and trees bearing loquat-like fruit, and other scattered vegetation issuing from rockwork, under the moon and small cloud swirls, the cavetto decorated with three lobed cartouches enclosing berried branches on a star diaper ground, the lobed mouthrim with alternating similar fruit sprays and three florets, the base lacquered black   

Collection of H.R.N. Norton, Esq.
Sotheby’s London, 26^th March 1963, lot 30.
Christie's New York, 16^th October 2001, lot 227.

The Arts of the Ming Dynasty, Oriental Ceramic Society, London, 1957, cat.no. 274.

 

Lacquer lobed dishes of the Ming dynasty are rare and the present piece is especially fine for its beautiful shape and delicate inlay design. For related inlay decorated black lacquer dishes of the same period, see a foliate dish decorated with figures in landscape, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, new York, illustrated in James C.Y.Watt and Barbara Brennan Ford, East Asian Lacquer, New York, 1991, pl. 60, together with a lozenge-shaped dish also decorated with figures in a garden setting, pl. 59.