Glazed porcelain dish with shallow, curved sides and everted rim, supported on a low wedge-shaped foot-ring. The well is finely incised with a rampant dragon facing a flaming pearl, surrounded by flames. The cavetto is incised with a pair of striding dragons, each chasing a pearl, separated by flames and ruyi-form clouds, the exterior incised with a conforming design, above a lappet border. All the design is highlighted in aubergine, reserved against a leaf-green ground. The base is painted in underglaze blue with the six-character reign mark of Kangxi within a double circle under a transparent glaze.
Diameter: 24.8cm
Provenance:
R. F. A. Riesco, Croydon.
R. Radin, London.
Shimentang collection.
Exhibited:
London, 2012, Eskenazi Limited.
Published:
Edgar E. Bluett, The Riesco Collection of Old Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, London, 1951, figure 74, top shelf, for almost certainly the same dish.
Sotheby’s, London, Fine Chinese Ceramics, Bronzes and Works of Art, 11 December 1984, number 382.
Eskenazi Limited, London, Qing porcelain from a private collection, 1st – 23rd November 2012, number 1.
Similar examples:
The Tsui Museum of Art, Chinese Ceramics IV, Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 1995, number 115.
Louise Cort and Jan Stuart, Joined Colors, Decoration and Meaning in Chinese Porcelain; Ceramics from Collectors in the Min Chiu Society, Hong Kong, Washington D.C., 1993, page 89, number 18, for a larger dish.
Xu Huping, The Official Kiln Porcelain of the Chinese Qing Dynasty, Shanghai, 2003, page 74 for a larger dish in the Nanjing Museum.
A large portion of the porcelain produced by the imperial factory at Jingdezhen was intended for practical use by the imperial household, rather than for ritual or celebratory purposes. By the Qianlong period, regulations were laid down to specify the designs and combinations allowed for each member of the imperial family. For instance, by the Qianlong period, green wares with purple dragons were assigned to the fifth rank concubine, guiren1. Although these regulations had not yet been codified in the Kangxi period, it is likely that many of the stipulations were already in place.
1 Peter Lam ed., Imperial Porcelain of Late Qing from the Kwan Collection, Hong Kong, 1983, pages 26 - 27 for the article by Simon Kwan, quoting from Regulation of the Palace of the Qing Dynasty.