A superb and rare early Ming blue and white vase, (meiping) Ming dynasty, Yongle period

the finely potted baluster body rising from a gently tapering base to full swelling shoulders, surmounted by a short waisted neck with rolled lip, superbly painted in graduated tones of vivid cobalt-blue enhanced by characteristic 'heaping and piling', with a broad meander of luxuriant lotus blossoms on gracefully scrolling stems, arranged in two tiers and terminating at the tip in a bud flanked by scrolling leaves, below a collar of four detached fruiting sprays of pomegranate, crab apple, peach and lychee, the base encircled by further detached sprays of peony, chrysanthemum, rose and camellia, all between double-line borders, the foot and countersunk base left unglazed

Christie's New York, 20th September 2002, lot 313.

Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. I, Tokyo, 1976, no. 740, p. 246.

Blue and white porcelain of the Yongle period rank among the finest in the history of Chinese ceramics and their influence on later Imperial wares cannot be exaggerated.  The combination of fruit and flower sprays became popular in the Yongle period, and with its elegant form, naturalistic decoration and overall well-balanced composition, the present vase exemplifies the style, taste and high standard of quality of early Ming Imperial porcelain.  The fine potting, glossy glaze and the intense coloring and pronounced 'heaping and piling' of the underglaze cobalt-blue to emphasize the three-dimensional quality of the design, are also a reflection of the remarkable technical progress made in the Imperial kilns at Jingdezhen in the early 15th century.

Excluding the present vase, only three other meiping of this type appear to have been previously been offered at auction: one from the collection of Major Lindsay F. Hay was sold in our London rooms, 25th June 1946, lot 61; another, included in the Exhibition of Ancient Chinese Ceramics, Kau Chi Society of Chinese Art, Hong Kong, 1981, cat.no. 62, was sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 15th November 1988, lot 122; and the third was sold in our London rooms, 17th November 1999, lot 744.

Other examples of this design but of various sizes are preserved in several major museum collections, for example, in the Percival David Foundation, London, included in Margaret Medley, Oriental Ceramics. The World's Great Collections, vol. 6, Tokyo, 1982, no. 104;  in the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, illustrated in Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1987, pl. 630; and in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. 34 Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze-Red (I), Hong Kong, 2000, no. 31, p. 33.

Vases of this design are also preserved in the two important historic porcelain collections in the Near East, including a slightly larger example illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, London, 1986, vol. II, no. 623, which is closely related to one in the collection of the National Palace Museum, illustrated in Mingdai chunian ciqi tezhan, Taipei, 1982, cat.no. 12; while another of still larger size can be found in the Ardebil Shrine in Iran, and is illustrated in J.A. Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine, Washington D.C., 1956, pl. 51, no.29.406.

In Kong Fanzhi, Wenwu, 1985, no. 12, pp. 90-92, the author notes that meiping are found in Imperial tombs through the Ming dynasty, the number evidently specific to each rank: four blue and white meiping in an Emperor's tomb, two meiping, either both blue and white or one white and one blue and white, in the tomb of an Empress or Dowager Empress, and a single blue and white vase in the tomb of a Prince or Princess.