dish
- Museum number
- 1968,0422.26
- Description
-
Large serving dish with bracket-lobed edge painted in underglaze blue. This magnificent heavily potted large serving dish has rounded sides and a flattened upturned rim with a thickened bracket-lobed edge. Inside it is painted with a mandarin fish surrounded by ferns and water weeds in underglaze blue. In the cavetto a formal lotus scroll is depicted and there is a cross-diaper border around the rim. The base is unglazed and has fired pinkish-white.
- Production date
- 1330-1368 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 47.10 centimetres
-
Height: 8.20 centimetres
-
Weight: 4.10 kilograms
- Curator's comments
- Harrison-Hall 2001:
The Chinese word for fish, 鱼 yu, and the word for abundance or surplus, 余 yu, have the same sound and thus the fish is a rebus for wealth and prosperity. This design was also used for dishes with a smooth rim. For example, two related dishes without the bracket-lobed rim are in the Ardebil shrine. Another is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Dishes of this type were exported to India as well as the Middle East. Shards from dishes with minor variations in the design were excavated at a palace complex, Kotla Firuzshah, in Delhi, built in 1354 for Sultan Firuzshah Tughlaq and not lived in much after 1388; it was destroyed in 1398.
- Location
- On display (G33/dc29b/s3)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
1996 11 Jul-6 Oct, Japan, Arita, Kyushu Ceramic Museum, Ceramics and Civilisation
2009 Dec 11 - 2011 Feb 18, BM, North Entrance case, blue and white porcelain display
2012 22 Jun-2013 6 Jan, Beijing, National Museum of China, ‘Passion for Porcelain’
- Acquisition date
- 1968
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1968,0422.26
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: D5 (Sedgwick number)
