A very fine doucai 'narcissus' dish mark and period of Yongzheng

finely potted with shallow curved sides resting on a slightly tapered foot, exquisitely painted in brilliant enamels to the interior with a central medallion containing narcissus growing among rocks, their leaves in contrasted tones of yellowish and darker green and the numerous flowers and buds on each stem in white enamel with lemon-yellow centres and purple-tipped calyxes, the pierced ornamental rocks finely drawn in delicate shades of cobalt-blue with a branch Chinese sacred bamboo with two clusters of red fruits arching to one side and a small tuft of purple lingzhi below, all within a double line border repeated at the rim, the exterior painted with further blue rocks, two with lingzhi with contrasted red, yellow and purple heads, together with bamboo and narcissus and the third with Chinese sacred bamboo, all between underglaze-blue double-line borders, the base inscribed with a six-character mark in underglaze-blue within a double circle

Sotheby's London, 2nd December 1974, lot 519.
Collection of the British Rail Pension Fund.
Sothebys Hong Kong, 16th May 1989, lot 69.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 1st November 1999, lot 364.

Exhibited on loan at the Dallas Museum of Art, 1985-88.

A dish of this design was included in the exhibition The Hundred Flowers. Botanical Motifs in Chinese Art, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 1985, cat. no. 46, where the elegant flower motif is explained by Bartholomew as a rebus which can be translated 'Fungus Fairy bestows birthday greetings.'  Similar dishes are also published in Spencer, Selected Chinese Ceramics from Han to Qing Dynasties, Taipei, 1990, pl. 137, from the Chang Foundation, Taipei, previously sold in these rooms, 20th May 1987, lot 537; in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyantang Collection, London, 1994, vol. II, pl. 765; and in Nakazawa, Chinese Ceramics in the Toguri Museum of Art, Orientations, April 1988, fig. 19.  

This design of flowers and rocks is also known from two kesi panels, probably of earlier date, woven with the name of the Song painter Cui Po, one from the Imperial Collection, included in the Ilustrated Catalogue of Chinese Government Exhibits for the International Exhibition of Chinese Art in London, 1935, vol. IV, no. 11; the other from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, included in the exhibition The Arts of the Ming Dynasty, The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1952, cat. no. 328.