Although only briefly catalogued, it almost certainly dates from the Kangxi period (1661-1722) – an era when the imperial porcelain factories at Jingdezhen, inactive during the upheavals of the late Ming period, were reopened and a new era of high-quality production and technical innovation begun.
This dish offered on May 23, marked with a lozenge issuing floral tendrils, displays a powder blue ground with the central figure of a travelling lohan with staff and flywhisk highlighted in under-glaze red.
He may be the one of the ‘fighting monks’ from the widely-read Chinese epic Shuihu zhuan or the monk Xuanzang (600- 64), who made a 17-year journey to bring Buddhist teachings from India to China.
Similar dishes of this scarce type are known in a number of major collections.
