42. M4704
£14,500
Description
Chinese porcelain blue and white hexagonal lobed deep dish painted in the centre with a pair of birds, one perched on a flowering peony branch, the other with open wings standing amongst rockwork looking up at its mate, amongst grasses and blue-washed flower sprays encircled by a wide hexagonal cash diaper with six flower heads of lotus, poppy, chrysanthemum, peony, pomegranate flower and tree peony, all beneath the upright brown-dressed rim.
9 3/8 inches, 23.7 cm diameter.
Tianqi/Chongzhen, circa 1630.
Edo Period Japanese wood box.
Provenance & Additional Information
- From three ancient Japanese collections.
- Sold by T. Edo Inouye & Son, Tokyo, 28th May 2018.
- Included by Marchant in their exhibition of Kosometsuke & Shonzui, 2024, no. 42, pp. 112/113.
- Only one other dish of this type appears recorded and is illustrated by the Iida City Art Museum, Nagano, Japan, in their catalogue of The Watahan Nohara Collection, 2000, no. 78, p. 80. It is interesting to note that one of the old labels on the box records that this dish was once one of a pair.
- The shape of this dish is similar to the well-known group of ko-akai, coloured dishes painted in the centre with egret amongst a lotus pond encircled by a border with six different creatures. An example of the ko-akai dish is illustrated by John Ayers in The Baur Collection, Chinese Ceramics, Volume II, no. A237, and another is illustrated by Susanne G. Valenstein in World’s Great Ceramics, Vol. 11, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, no. 101.
- It is probable that the knife-cut brown dressed rim solved the problem of mushikui on slightly earlier pieces.
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