A fine café-au-lait glazed barbed dish Seal mark and period of Qianlong | 清乾隆 醬釉菱口盤 《大清乾隆年製》款

Brown dishes with twin raised lines around the outside, but with plain rim were among the earliest porcelains produced in the imperial kilns in the Kangxi reign, and continued to be made in the Yongzheng period, but the barbed rim appeared only in the Qianlong reign. Two Kangxi dishes inscribed with dates equivalent to AD 1672 are in the Shanghai Museum and in the Sir Percival David Collection in the British Museum, London; see Wang Qingzheng, ed., Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1998, pl. 226; and the Illustrated Catalogue of Ming and Qing Monochrome Wares in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London, 1989, no. A 532. A brown-glazed dish of Yongzheng mark and period, with similar double lines but with straight rim, in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is illustrated in He Li, Chinese Ceramics. A New Standard Guide, London, 1996, pl. 573. A similar pair of Qianlong dishes from the H.M. Knight collection was sold in these rooms, 29th November 1979, lot 326.