A fine café-au-lait glazed barbed dish. Seal mark and period of Qianlong.

A fine café-au-lait glazed barbed dish. Seal mark and period of Qianlong. Photo Sotheby's

the deep everted sides rising to a flared, barbed rim with eight bracket foliations, the exterior decorated with raised double fillets, all beneath an even glossy and opaque coffee-brown glaze, the base left white and inscribed with a six-character reign mark in underglaze blue; 20.5 cm., 8 1/8 in. Estimate 200,000—300,000 HKD. Lot Sold 620,000 HKD

PROVENANCE:  Christie's New York, 19th March 2008, lot 670.

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1816.

NOTE: Brown dishes with twin raised lines around the outside, but with plain rim were among the earliest porcelains produced in the imperial kilns in the Kangxi reign, and continued to be made in the Yongzheng period, but the barbed rim appeared only in the Qianlong reign. Two Kangxi dishes inscribed with dates equivalent to AD 1672 are in the Shanghai Museum and in the Sir Percival David Collection in the British Museum, London; see Wang Qingzheng, ed., Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1998, pl. 226; and the Illustrated Catalogue of Ming and Qing Monochrome Wares in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London, 1989, no. A 532. A brown-glazed dish of Yongzheng mark and period, with similar double lines but with straight rim, in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is illustrated in He Li, Chinese Ceramics. A New Standard Guide, London, 1996, pl. 573. A similar pair of Qianlong dishes from the H.M. Knight collection was sold in these rooms, 29th November 1979, lot 326.

Sotheby's. The Meiyintang Collection - An Important Selection of Imperial Chinese Porcelains. 07 Apr 11. Hong Kong www.sothebys.com