A famille-verte 'birthday' dish, Mark and period of Kangxi | 清康熙 五彩獻寶圖萬壽無疆盤 《大清康熙年製》款

Christie's New York, 2nd December 1993, lot 293.

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 1st November 1994, lot 63.

Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong.

紐約佳士得1993年12月2日，編號293

香港蘇富比1994年11月1日，編號63

天民樓收藏，香港

The present dish is a rare example of a group of finely potted and painted 'birthday' dishes, featuring auspicious themes of longevity, made at the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen, most likely to commemorate the Kangxi Emperor's (r. 1662-1722) sixtieth birthday in 1713. 

A pair of birthday dishes, with one depicted with two beauties holding an ewer and a jue, and the companion dish painted with ladies holding a double-gourd and a basket of lingzhi fungus, is in the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne, accession nos F 63,72, published in Porzellanschätze der Kangxi-Zeit / Porcelain Treasures of the Kangxi Period

, Hetjens Deutsches Keramikmuseum, Dusseldorf, 2015, pls 7 and 8. Another similar dish, formerly in the Elphinstone Collection, is now on loan from the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art to the British Museum, London, accession no. PDF.890, included in the Illustrated Catalogue of Ch'ing Enamelled Wares, London, 1973, pl. 890. A related dish with beauties offering double-gourd and lingzhi is in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, accession no. 1964.220, illustrated in The Severance and Greta Millikin Collection, Cleveland, 1990, pl. 70.

A similar example was sold in our New York rooms, 15th September 1999, lot 87. Compare also a related pair of birthday dishes painted with the same auspicious design, but smaller in size and with scalloped rims, formerly in the collection of T.Y. Chao, sold three times at auction: first in these rooms, 28th-29th November 1978, lot 301, again at Christie's Hong Kong, 17th January 1989, lot 663, and most recently in our New York rooms, 22nd September 2020, lot 107.