7. Underglaze blue porcelain ‘pomegranate’ dish
Ming dynasty, Xuande mark and period, 1426 - 1435
Diameter: 30.0cm
Delicately painted in the centre with a leafy pomegranate branch bearing blooms and buds in rich, bright cobalt tones, this dish is an extremely rare example of its kind, produced at the kilns at Jingdezhen for the imperial court. Only a handful of similar examples in blue and white from the Xuande period are known. Four are in museum collections including the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, the National Palace Museum, Taipei and the Suzhou Museum.
This dish is part of a wider and distinct family, featuring different flowering plants, produced in a variety of colours over the course of the Ming dynasty. It appears to have been an innovation of the Xuande period and it is possible that the blue and white versions such as the present example were the original prototypes.
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View Blue and white porcelain from the Yuan and early Ming dynasties