Cleveland Museum of Art

Dish with Bird on Fruit Tree Branch

Date

1662–1722

Medium

Porcelain with famille-verte overglaze enamel decoration

Culture

China, Jiangxi province, Jingdezhen kilns, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), Kangxi mark and reign (1662–1722)

Department

Chinese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Among the greatest achievements of early Qing porcelain are table wares and display objects decorated with polychrome painting like this pair of dishes. Featuring birds perched in peach trees, the dishes are related to the famous birthday set commissioned for the Kangxi emperor’s sixtieth birthday in 1713. These pieces are more inventive than those in the 1713 set, however, since the unframed ornament is allowed to continue unbroken from the outer to inner surfaces and back out again, thus transforming each vessel into a three-dimensional canvas. By the early eighteenth century, the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen were producing exceptionally fine pieces on a staggering scale.

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