Dish with scenes of leisurely activities

Dish with scenes of leisurely activities

Porcelain with underglaze-blue designs

h. 3.2 cm., diam. 26.6 cm. (1 1/4 x 10 1/2 in.)

Gift of Dr. Stanley Yeager

2006-505

Asia, China

on bottom: Reign mark "Da Qing Kangxi nian zhi" 大清康熙年製

Wheel-turned, round dish on a footring with a flat center rising to a flat angled rim. Upper side is decorated with figural scenes in the center round panel and in four oblong panels around the rim. The center panel shows a scene from Wang Shifu's 王實甫 (ca 1260–1336) the Romance of the West Chamber (Xixiangji 西廂記): a man holds a folding fan seated at a table with an attendant holding a broom/mop. This scene is set in a open room with roof eaves seen above and garden rocks in front. On the rim in the upper right is a panel showing a seated Tao Yuanming with an attendant watering potted chrysanthemum. In the upper left is a seated Wang Xizhi 王羲之 (303–361) with an approaching attendant holding a goose. Lower left is Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤 (1017–1073) seated beside potted lotus flowers. Zhou Dunyi is also known to have said that the best quality of life is that of a pure Lotus growing out of dirty waters, where the Lotus is the natural equivalent of the noble person (junzi). And in the lower left is a man (possibly Bai Juyi 白居易 [772–846]) sleeping under a tree with an attendant holding a qin instrument. The underside is decorated with four emblems around the rim; and a double band around the top of the footring. The interior wall of the footring is vertical, and the exterior side flat but angle down toward the center. Inside the footring, the flat bottom is the reign mark inscribed inside a double-line circle.

Chinese

Kangxi

chinese ceramics styles, dishes, blue-and-white, ceramics

underglazing, porcelain

leisure, figures (representations)