A small blue and white 'floral' barbed dish, Ming dynasty, Yongle period | 明永樂 青花花卉紋菱花式小盤

Collection of Shah Abbas (1588-1629).

Acquired in Europe by the father of the present owner in the 1960s.

沙阿·阿巴斯（1588-1629年）收藏

由現任藏家父親於上世紀60年代得自歐洲

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. Under the strict supervision of the court, the imperial porcelain kilns at Jingdezhen radically improved the materials used for throwing, glazing and painting in this period, which in the preceding Hongwu reign (1368-1398) had still led to a somewhat haphazard production line. By the Yongle period blue-and-white had developed a reliable standard and a distinct identity that made it one of the most highly revered ceramic wares throughout history. The present dish displays to perfection 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 one are also believed to have been intended for this purpose, but with their flat centers would obviously have been much more universally useable. 

In the Hongwu period, the bracket shape, created by double molds, had sharp angles, ridges and grooves, and a thick, angular rim. In the Yongle reign, the brackets – in China likened to the form of the water caltrop (ling) – were much softened and the rim became broader and thinner, with a well-rounded edge; 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.

For a closely related example, see a dish in the Ardabil Shrine, Iran, illustrated in John A. Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine, Washington, 1956, pl. 29.272. Compare also other Yongle barbed rim dishes, including one in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 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, cat. no. 60; and another, sold in our New York rooms, 20th March 2018, lot 108.