Of round shape, with slightly everted mouths and gently foliate edges, each on a short round moulded foot, painted in brilliant underglaze blue enamels and decorated on the outside of the bowls with a row of moulded petal-shaped panels radiating from the foot, each panel painted with a single flowering branch, including lotus, prunus, chrysanthemum and peony, all below an upper band of six larger panels with scenes of mythical beasts below birds and flowering branches, one scene with a kylin looking up towards a large phoenix in the sky, the inside rims with broad bands of differing flowers, the centre of the bowls with a large roundel decorated with stylised rock-work, large flowering blossoms and butterflies, the feet decorated with double blue lines, the bases glazed.
Literature
For an almost identical but single bowl of the same size see the collection of the Kermiekmuseum Princessehof, the Netherlands, no: NO 01036, from the Ottema-Kingma Stichting collection.
