A FINE DOUCAI 'NARCISSUS' DISH mark and period of Yongzheng

finely potted with shallow curved sides resting on a slightly tapered foot, delicately painted to the interior within a central medallion containing narcissus growing among rocks, their slender leaves in contrasted tones of green and the flowers and buds with pale yellow centres and reddish orange tipped calyxes, the pierced ornamental rocks finely drawn in delicate shades of cobalt-blue with a branch of Chinese sacred bamboo with two clusters of berries arching to one side and a small tuft of lingzhi fungus with shrubs below, all within double-line borders repeated at the rim, the exterior painted with further blue rocks, two with lingzhi together with narcissus and bamboo, and the third with Chinese sacred bamboo and clusters of red berries, all between double-line borders, the base with the six-character mark in underglaze-blue within a double-circle

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. 37, 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. 

The 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 Illustrated 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.