58. * VASE EN PORCELAINE À LA GLAÇURE BLANCHE 'TIANBAI' À DÉCOR 'ANHUA' Époque Yongle (1402-1424) A 'SWEET WHITE' ANHUA-DECORATED 'LOTUS' JAR Yongle period (1402-1424) With a wide baluster body rising from a slightly countersunk base to full rounded shoulders and a short, tapered neck, finely and freely incised around the body with a continuous flower scroll issuing large lotus blooms and curled leaves, the foot encircled with a band of upright lappets, applied overall with a smooth, opaque 'sweet white' (tianbai) glaze. 21.4cm （8 3/8in) high. 明永樂 甜白釉暗刻蓮紋罐 Provenance: Sotheby's Hong Kong, 5 April 2017, lot 3665 來源: 香港蘇富比，2017年4月5日，編號3665 With its smooth white glaze, this small jar embodies the classic style of the imperial court during the Yongle period (1403-1425) of the Ming dynasty. The slightly matte, silky tianbai glaze was developed by potters working at the imperial kilns in Jingdezhen under the Yongle emperor in response to the his preference for fine white porcelain wares to be used in the palace and ritual ceremonies. This type of glaze was later known as 'tianbai', a term that was first used by the Ming writer Huang Yizheng in his Shiwu Ganzhu, who accurately described the glaze as 'white like congealed fat, immaculate like piled-up snow', see Imperial Porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande Periods excavated from the Site of the Ming Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen, Hong Kong, 1989, p.71. Producing this unctuous, silky glaze on a pure white, fine porcelain body presented a technical challenge for early Ming potters as the large numbers of tianbai sherds unearthed in Jingdezhen from consecutive Yongle strata demonstrate op.cit., p.19. Today, few early Ming 'sweet-white'-glazed porcelains survive. A jar of closely related form, incised with dragons instead of scrolling lotus under a 'sweet white' glaze, was excavated from the site of the Ming imperial kilns at Jingdezhen and dated to the Yongle period, is illustrated in Yuan and Ming Imperial Porcelains Unearthed from Jingdezhen, Beijing, 1999, p.146, no.95. Compare also with a larger jar covered with a tianbai glaze, formerly in the Collection of J.J.Lally & Co., sold Christie's New York, 23 March 2023, lot 895, and another larger jar in the collection of the Nanjing Museum, published by Xu Huping in The Treasures of the Nanjing Museum, Hong Kong, 2001, p.56, no.39.