1-234-490 - The Museum of East Asian Art/Heritage Images

Hexagonal basin with cranes and bagua, Ming dynasty, Wanli period, China, 1572-1620. Basin on integral bracketed pierced stand. The piece is painted with ogival panels which contain cranes amid stylised clouds above stylised waves and one of the eight trigrams. The corners have stylised clouds with similar clouds on top of the bracketed trefoil feet all beneath a narrow band of scrolling flower heads, with two applied partly unglazed boar heads. The trefoil feet are joined together with a flat glazed clay section with underglazed blue line borders. The base has a six-character Wanli mark in a rectangular cartouche and the piece is of the period. Like many of the Chinese exported ceramics to Japan, this piece was used as part of the Japanese tea ceremony, probably as a container for rinising tea cups (kensui).