A fine Chinese coral-red reverse decorated ’floral’ bowl

The finely and deeply potted bowl resting on a short straight foot, the exterior reverse-decorated in a rich iron-red enamel with a continuous scroll of peony heads alternating with lotus and hibiscus flowers and linked by curling tendrils reserved in white against the opaque coral ground, the interior in a white glaze, the recessed white base inscribed in underglaze blue with a square seal mark of Daoguang. Diameter: 13 cm.

Compare an almost identical bowl from the Percival David Foundation, museum no. PDF, B.709, also with a Daoguang mark, another from the Percival David Foundation illustrated in ’Oriental Ceramics, The World’s Great Collections’, Kodansha Series, volume 6, plate, 94, another is published in Geng Baochang, Ming qing ciqi jianding, Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 483; and a third in the Baerwald collection, included in the exhibition ”Exhibition Chinese art”, Society of East Asian Art, Berlin, 1929, cat. no. 1034 and three bowls in the Ohlmer collection in the Roemer Museum, Hildesheim, illustrated in Ulrich Wiesner, Chinese Porzellan, Cologne, 1981, pls 30‑32.