Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

The figure scenes inside the bowl depict historical and legendary personages, accompanied by legends in Chinese which, however, do not identify all the persons clearly. A similar piece has been discovered in a tomb datable to 1502 in Jingshan county.

The U-shaped bowl is very heavily potted and has a high straight foot with low footring and domed base. The inside is inscribed with the character gao (‘high’, also a family name) in the centre, enclosed in a circular ring, and the inner walls are decorated, from right to left, with an official seated at a desk laid with writing utensils, a rhinoceros horn emblem beside him; a man seated at a table with a qin zither, identified as the philosopher Confucius; two men seated at a table playing chess; a man reading at a desk with inkstone and brush, a wine jar with ladle by his side, identified as the poet and renowned drunkard Li Taibo; and a man standing beside an unrolled scroll painting depicting two deer. The decoration appears to have been impressed, with a key-fret border below the rim. The outside shows a quickly incised flower scroll with simple five-petalled blooms, below another key-fret border. The light yellowish-green glaze covers the footring but leaves the base free in the yellowish-brown biscuit.