Lot 3
  • 3

A RARE YELLOW AND GREEN ‘DRAGON’ ZHADOU MARK AND PERIOD OF ZHENGDE

Estimate
700,000 - 900,000 HKD
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Description

  • porcelain
the compressed globular body rising from a splayed foot to a wide neck flaring at the rim, brightly decorated around the exterior with incised details picked out in bright green enamel and reserved on a deep yellow ground, depicting four five-clawed dragons striding among stylised clouds in pursuit of a 'flaming pearl', their writhing scaly bodies emitting flames, above a band of petal lappets and a single-line fillet encircling the foot, the interior and the base left white, the base inscribed in underglaze blue with a four-character reign mark within double circles

Provenance

Collection of Derek Ide (d. 1970), until 1964.
Bluett & Sons Ltd, London, 1964 (£275).
Collection of Roger Pilkington (1928-69), from 1964 (£385).
Collection of Maureen Pilkington (1928-2011).

Literature

Adrian Joseph, Ming Porcelains. Their Origins and Development, London, 1971, pl. 74 and back cover.

Condition

There is a restored chip to the rim (3x0.4cm), a 2cm faint rim hairline. Other minor firing flaws including three short firing lines at the base (longest 1cm).
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

This green-and-yellow dragon pattern is one of the classic designs of the Zhengde reign (1506-22). The colour scheme was among the first the Jingdezhen potters experimented with when the imperial kilns started to enlarge their range of colours and designs in the Yongle period (1403-24). Although no surviving examples are known from that or the following reigns and no successfully fired pieces may have left the kilns at all, discarded samples of a dish and a small ewer and cover, both decorated with incised dragons and clouds in green on a yellow ground, have been recovered from the Yongle stratum of the waste heaps of the imperial kiln site; trials are equally known from the Xuande (1426-35) and Chenghua (1465-87) periods, sometimes with the design incised, sometimes raised in slip relief, but the colour scheme only appears to have entered into regular production for the court in the Zhengde period; for earlier discarded experiments excavated at the kiln site see the exhibition catalogues Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1996, cat. nos 109 and 130; Jingdezhen chutu Ming Xuande guanyao ciqi/Xuande Imperial Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 73; and A Legacy of Chenghua: Imperial Porcelain of the Chenghua Reign Excavated from Zhushan, Jingdezhen, The Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1993, cat. nos B 20 and B 30.

A zhadou of this design is published in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, pl. 8:32, together with two dishes and a bowl of matching green-and-yellow dragon design, pls 8:29-8:31, all with four-character Zhengde reign marks; two similar vessels are in the Sir Percival David Collection in the British Museum, illustrated in Margaret Medley, The Chinese Potter, Oxford, 1976, fig. 154 (A 734), and Margaret Medley, Illustrated Catalogue of Ming Polychrome Wares, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London, 1978, no. 33, pl. IV (PDF A 735); Medley notes, ibid., 1978, p. 20, that the two jars differ slightly “in that the body [of A 735] is thicker and heavier; the yellow is also darker, and the green enamel has spilled over into the yellow ground”; another example is illustrated in John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, Geneva, 1999, vol. 1, pl. 70; one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is published in Suzanne G. Valenstein, The Herzman Collection of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1992, pl. 93; one in the Freer Gallery was included in the exhibition Ming Porcelains in the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1953, cat. no. 30; and one from the collection of Victor C. Novotny, sold in our New York rooms, 18th September 1996, lot 189, is published in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1682.