White marble dish with scalloped rim

China, Yuan – Ming dynasty, 14th – 15th century

Diameter: 13 1/2 inches, 34.2 cm

Height: 1 1/4 inches, 3 cm

A large white marble dish, supported on a ring foot, with rounded well and a flat everted rim, which is bracketed. The very outer rim of the dish is slightly raised. The dish is entirely unadorned. The marble is predominantly white in tone, with some areas of darker mottling.

This marble dish is very rare. The prototype of such dishes is presumably a ceramic or lacquer example. Underglaze cobalt blue decorated porcelain dishes are known from this period: a bracketed dish with a decoration of ducks in a lotus pool is in the Meiyintang collection.[1] Plain dishes with bracketed rims, dated to the Yuan dynasty are known in other materials, such as silver and lacquer. A Yuan dynasty lacquer example, closely comparable in size and also unadorned, is in the Shoto Museum of Art in Tokyo.[2]

1. Krahl, R. Chinese Ceramics in the Meiyintang Collection, Volume 1, London 1994, no. 639, p. 21
2. Nishioka, Y. Chinese Lacquerware in the Shoto Museum, Tokyo 1990, pp. 23 and 106