Saucer dish

This small dish reflects the taste for polychrome ceramics that was developed during the Ming period. The interior is decorated with a fruiting peach tree, the trunk of which is twisted in the form of a stylized shou character standing for, along with the peaches, long life. The application of overglaze color in this early example of polychrome is no where near as refined as the technique became during the next two centuries but, it stands near the beginning of the trend towards pictorial decoration with overglaze colors.