A fine and rare small blue and white 'waves' barbed dish, Ming dynasty, Yongle period | 明永樂 青花花卉海水菱口折沿盤

Collection of Captain and Mrs Ferris Luboshez.

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 16th November 1973, lot 137.

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 29th November 1977, lot 24.

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 15th May 1990, lot 21.

Ferris Luboshez 將軍伉儷收藏

香港蘇富比1973年11月16日，編號137

香港蘇富比1977年11月29日，編號24

香港蘇富比1990年5月15日，編號21

Exhibition of Chinese Art from the Ferris Luboshez Collection, University of Maryland Art Gallery, Maryland, 1972, cat. no. 129, fig. 9.

The Somerset House Art Treasures Exhibition, Grosvenor House, London, 1979, cat. no. 014 (label).

《Exhibition of Chinese Art from the Ferris Luboshez Collection [Ferris Luboshez 中國藝術品珍藏展覽]》，馬里蘭大學藝術館，馬里蘭，1972年，編號129，圖9

《The Somerset House Art Treasures Exhibition》，格羅夫納大宅，倫敦，1979年，編號014（標籤）

Sotheby's Hong Kong – Twenty Years, Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 70.

《香港蘇富比二十周年》，香港，1993年，圖版70

This dish embodies the beauty and outstanding quality of blue-and-white wares from the Yongle reign (1403-1424), arguably the best period for the production of porcelain decorated in underglaze cobalt blue. The present dish displays the features that characterize Yongle blue-and-white: the orange tone of the body, where it remained exposed, the bluish tinge of the transparent glaze, the bright cobalt blue, and particularly the tendency of the iron-rich pigment to fire through the glaze to form blackish spots on the surface, known as ‘heaping and piling’.

The barbed shape and the painted flower design are equally characteristic of this great period. Although both are directly derived from Hongwu prototypes, in the Yongle period they were equally improved in every respect. Hongwu prototypes were moulded as cup stands, with the ring of petal panels painted onto a raised ring in the centre that would hold the cup. Dishes such as the present are also believed to have been intended for this purpose, but with their flat centres would obviously have been much more universally useable. The way the short petal panels are painted, however, has a trompe-l’oeil effect, also suggesting a raised ring. For the Hongwu prototype compare a dish excavated from the Ming imperial kiln site, included in the exhibition Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1996, cat. no. 17.

The painted decoration on the present dish is notable, with the graceful rose design appearing to be in motion, the buds swaying in the wind, and the lotus sprays seeming to be dancing, their stems swirling in different directions. Similar Yongle dishes also exist with other related flower designs, but the present pattern is particularly impressive because of its powerful wave border with undulating and crescent waves painted in thick brushstrokes, reinforcing the sense of movement which pervades the whole pattern.

A dish of this design in the Palace Museum, Taipei, was included in the Museum’s exhibition Shi yu xin: Mingdai Yongle huangdi de ciqi/Pleasingly Pure and Lustrous: Porcelains from the Yongle Reign (1403-1424) of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 2017, catalogue, p. 60, where it is illustrated together with a small bracket-lobed cup, p. 61, of a type that may have been used together with such dishes; and another was sold in our New York rooms, 20th March 2018, lot 108. Another dish of this design, but attributed to the Xuande period, is in the Shanghai Museum, published in Lu Minghua, Shanghai Bowuguan cangpin yanjiu daxi / Studies of the Shanghai Museum Collections: A Series of Monographs. Mingdai guanyao ciqi [Ming imperial porcelain], Shanghai, 2007, pl. 1-23.

A similar dish from the collections of A.D. Brankston, Mrs W. H. Roberts, and later T.Y. Chao, was sold in our London rooms, 30th March 1978, lot 175, and in these rooms, 19th May 1987, lot 239; compare also two other dishes of this design, but with small floral sprigs instead of the waves around the rim, thus creating a completely different impression: one from the collections of Richard Bryant Hobart and later F. Gordon Morrill, exhibited at the William Hayes Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, sold in our New York rooms, 12th December 1969, lot 254, and at Doyle, New York, 16th September 2003, lot 80; the other sold in these rooms, 1st November 1999, lot 314.