This dish is incised with a five-clawed dragon pursuing a pearl in the centre. The border has two similar pearls among cloud scrolls, all under an even deep yellow glaze. The underside of the base has a six-character mark in blue within a double circle.

Henry Puyi, last of the Manchu emperors, was born in 1905 and ruled as a child for less than three years. He was restored for nine days in 1917. He became a puppet emperor under the Japanese in Manchuria in the new state called Manchukuo, but was captured by the Russians in 1945 and handed over to the Chinese communists. When he was released from jail in the late 1950s he worked in the Botanical Gardens. On 1st May 1962 he married a forty year old nurse named Li Shuxian, but had no children by her or his earlier empress. He died in 1967.

Literature: Anthony du Boulay, The Duberly Collection of Chinese Art at Winchester College (Winchester, 2019), p. 121

Provenance: Bequeathed as part of the Duberly Collection, 1978; a gift to Major Montagu and Lady Eileen Duberly from Mrs. Redford of 38a Markham Square, Chelsea, 16 March 1957

Location: Treasury, Gallery 2