A fine and rare blue and white barbed dish Ming Dynasty, Yongle period

well potted with an everted barbed rim, the rounded sides of conforming shape, supported by a short tapered circular foot, finely painted in vivid tones of cobalt-blue enhanced with characteristic 'heaping and piling' to the interior with a single meandering leafy stem issuing various blooms including peony, camellia, lotus and rose, enclosed within a double-line foliate border, encircled in the cavetto by twelve flower sprays, below the everted rim painted with a border of ruyi-heads on a scrolling leafy stem between double-line borders, the underside similarly decorated with floral sprays, the base unglazed  

Yongle dishes of this form and design can be found in important museums and private collections worldwide. A very similar large dish, in the British Museum, London, is illustrated in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics, London, 2001, p. 116, pl. 3:35, where another large dish of this shape but different decoration excavated in the Yongle stratum at Dongmentou, Zhushan, Jingdezhen, is mentioned. See another dish of this size and design in Taiwan, included in Porcelain of the National Palace Museum. Blue-and-White Ware of the Ming Dynasty, vol. 1, Hong Kong, 1963, pls. 22 and 22a; one, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, included in Ming chu qinghua ci, Beijing, 2002, pl. 134; one published in John Alexander Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine, Washington, 1956, pl. 35; and one, formerly in the collection of Dr. Frederik Wahlgen and later the LIndberg collection, included in the exhibition Ming Blue-and-White, Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, 1964, p. 18, cat.no. 36, was sold in these rooms, 28th November 1978, lot 66.

In further Asian collections, see a dish published in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol.2, London, 1994, pl. 663; one included in the exhibition Chinese Porcelain. The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, part 1, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1987, cat.no. 6; and one formerly in the Toguri Museum of Art, Tokyo, sold in our London rooms, 9th June 2004, lot 19.

Compare a dish from the Morrill collection sold at Doyle's New York, 16th September 2003, lot 82; and another sold in these rooms, 31st October 2004, lot 160.