Bowl with Secret Decoration, early 15th century

During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), an inward-looking period in Chinese history, the styles in much artistic production were set by the emperors. In the early Ming, the establishment of kilns that produced porcelains exclusively for the imperial court made Jingdezhen, in Jiangxi province, the most important ceramic center in China, and the manufacture of porcelain reached its peak. One of the great achievements of the Jingdezhen kilns was a glaze called “sweet white” (tianbai), which was favored by the Yongle emperor (reigned 1403-24) for ceremonial use at court. The best of these wares have a fine-grained, pure white body and a glaze that is transparent and glossy, without any tinge of color. The vessels’ walls were so thin that they were often called “bodiless.”

Many monochrome white porcelains of the early fifteenth century repeat the shapes of contemporary blue-and-white vessels and copy the blue designs in incision or low relief. A particularly popular device was to execute the ornament as anhua (secret decoration), which was so delicately incised that it is scarcely visible unless held up to the light. This lotus-shaped bowl is incised with such decoration in an interior pattern of radiating petals and wave border in molded slip and an exterior design of incised scrolling floral vine and key fret border.