Bowl with flowers

An extremely rare piece, this is an example of the enamel polychrome type of Tianqi imperial ware. The decoration is painted in purple, green, and creamy colors over a yellow glaze, the basic color tonalities for the three-color glaze of the early Qing period. A fungus branch, or ruyi, adorns the interior bottom and is matched on the outside by four flower blossoms—peony, chrysanthemum, plum, and lotus. The speckled dots on the surface, created by impurities in the clay, the rounded footring edge, the light blue mark written in a natural yet naive manner, all are characteristic of Tianqi ware (Geng 1993: 160-2).