A blue and white 'bird and deer' foliate dish and a blue and white miniature censer, Ming dynasty, Chongzhen period

Japanese Private Collection.

Censer : Ming Porcelain for the Japanese Market, Kosometsuke and Ko-akai, Marchant, London, 2008, cat. no. 28.

Compare a similar set of five dishes preserved in the Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo, illustrated in Kosometsuke and Shonzui. The Blue and White Tea Ceramics of Japanese Admiration, Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo, 2013, cat. no. 82; and a shard discovered at the No. 3 Middle School kiln site at Jingdezhen, from the Tianqi or Chongzhen strata, of a similar saucer dish with the similar inscription and mark to the base, illustrated by Huang Qinghua in Colourful Japan – The Special Exhibition of the Ordered Porcelains at the End of the Ming Dynasty From Japan, Jingdezhen, 2021, p. 120-121. Compare also a related dish, larger in size, sold at Christie's London, 12th June 1989, lot 222 (front cover); and a pair of related dishes without the blue ground border, included in Kosometsuke & Shonzui, Marchant, London, 2024, cat. no. 46.

A similar censer, possibly the pair to the present example, is preserved in the Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo, and illustrated in Kosometsuke and Shonzui, op. cit., cat. no. 69.