Blue-and-white Flat Vase with Figures

With a small round rim, a fine straight neck, sloping shoulders, a round flat body, an oval base, and a flat base that is slightly concave, this vessel appears with two handles in the shape of ru-yi. The neck is painted with a circling design of plantain leaves, above and below which are linear patterns in blue. The shoulder and base are also decorated with inverted lotus petal designs, and the main decoration of the body is a landscape garden scene. On one side are three figures, and on the other two. They hold musical instruments and appear to be dancing. The musicians and their clothes also indicate that they are non-Chinese. The heavy blue-and-white decoration includes many spots of brownish-green and dark brown, which appear as depressions in the surface. Blue is also found throughout the white glaze, and the places on the handles where the glaze collected is lake-green in color. The light biscuit of the body is quite delicate, and biscuit glaze has a glimmer of light orange color. The flat hu is known as an "embracing moon" vase, its shape being an imitation deriving from the Middle East. The decoration here, however, is very much Chinese in style, the painting method of the landscape scenery being in the traditional monochrome manner, with only the figures being foreign. Starting from the Yong-le reign of the Ming dynasty, the decoration of blue-and-white wares departed from the complex and dense decoration found in the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), focusing more on the visual effect of leaving white blank spaces. Such underglaze blue against more white of the body allows the pure and beautiful qualities to stand out even further, which is why Ming dynasty official wares were known as "Figure-few Yong-le". This work is a marvelous example of official Yong-le ware in terms of the glaze color and the landscape decoration with figures.