Sold Ceramics - Sold Famille Verte wares 1680-1725 - Flowers, Animals and Long Elizas - Page 1

Object 2011684

Dish

China

c.1700

Height 55 mm (2.17 inch), diameter of rim 354 mm (13.94 inch), diameter of footring 190/160 mm (7.48/6.30 inch), weight 1.380 grams (48.68 ounce (oz.))

Dish on a channel footring, with spreading sides and a flaring rim. Decorated in famille verte enamels with two birds in flight above a fenced garden, large taihu (garden) rock on which flowerpots filled with miniature gardens with rocks, flowering prunus, pine and bamboo trees. In the centre a spotted deer with crane amongst various lingzhi growing from rockwork. On the reverse five flowering lotus sprays. Marked on the base with the symbol mark: 'Artemisia leaf', symbol for healing and wealth, in a double circle, underglaze blue. Fitted in a steel frame.

The spotted deer design symbolises best wishes for a career as an official and good fortune and prosperity. This is because the Chinese word for deer, lu, has the same sound as the word for the high salary of a Chinese official. Another reason for the association with Chinese scholar-bureaucrats or literati is that one of the concluding rituals of the provincial examinations that had to be passed if one was to become an official in the Chinese civil service was a party known as the Banquet of Auspicious Omens, ore more literally the Deer-cry Banquet.

More frequently however, in Daoist mythology the spotted deer are considered auspicious animals connected to immortality. This is because they were believed to attain great age. Furthermore, they were the only animals able to locate and eat the special fungus of longevity, lingzhi (sacred fungus). These special mushrooms were found on the paradise islands of Penglai. In Chinese mythology the Penglai mountain is often called the base of the Eight Immortals, or at least where they travelled to have a banquet. In Chinese art the spotted deer usually accompanies Shoulao or Magu, the God and Goddess of Longevity. Because of all this, even today the horns of deer have an important place in Chinese medicine and can be found in every Chinese apothecary shop. The soft internal part of the horns is dried, pulverised, and made up into pills. The inferior parts are boiled up into jelly or tincture.

The importance of spotted deer in Chinese culture today was also reflected in a gift by Taiwan to the Chinese mainland in 2011 of two rare sika or spotted deer for the Liugongdao National Forest Park in east China's Shandong Province. The sika deer is one of the very few deer species that does not lose its spots upon reaching maturity. Spot patterns vary with the region. The color of the pelage ranges from mahogany to black, and white individuals are also known. (GOV.cn Chinese Government's Official Web Portal), (wikipedia.org)

Next to the Fêng (vide Phoenix), the crane (grus motignesia) is an auspicious symbol, representing longevity and wisdom, it is the mostly celebrated in Chinese legends, in which it is endowed with many mythical attributes. It is reputed as the patriarch of the feathered tribe and the aerial courser of the Immortals. It is one of the commonest emblems of longevity, being generally depicted under a pine tree-also a symbol of age. (Williams 1976, pp.332-333), (Jörg 2011/2, p.115)

This dish has a channel footring. It is still not known what its function may have been, but possibly the dish - filled with food or offerings - was meant to be placed on a wooden stand, which would have made it more stable. Dishes with channel footrings first appear in the 1670s and were made until c.1700; they no longer appear in 18th-century assortments. (Jörg 2011/2, p.49)

Condition: Some missing pieces of blue enamel and some wear to the iron-red decoration. Three shallow chips and various glaze rough spots to the rim.

References:

Williams 1976, p.101

Jörg 2011/2, p.49 & p.115

Price: Sold.