A pair of elegant saucer-dishes decorated in the famille verte palette, with peonies and butterflies. These shallow dishes, have raised sides and slightly flaring rims. They are boldly decorated with a flowering peony bush with green leaves and iron-red and blue blooms, standing next to a rock. One large green butterfly and several smaller butterflies hover above the flowers. The reverse is undecorated and they have a low foot-ring. Each dish has a rectangular label from Kunsthandel Morpurgo (Amsterdam) stating they are two small famille verte dishes and a stock number.
During the reign of Emperor Kangxi the development of over-glaze enamelling took enormous leaps forward, making a whole new range of colours possible. It saw the emergence of a new predominantly green colour palette, now referred to as famille verte. Around 1700 an overglaze blue enamel was also added to the new colour range. Before the later introduction of opaque pink enamels in c.1720, peony flowers - as on this dish - were often depicted in iron-red and sometimes other colours such as blue.
The design of butterflies and peonies has traditionally been a favoured motif in China for its highly auspicious qualities. Peonies (fuguiha), are emblems for wealth & honour. Butterflies (hudie or die) are a traditional symbol of joy, but often appear in combination with other emblematic objects. In combination, hudie (butterfly) is a pun for fudie, meaning an accumulation of blessings. Therefore when depicted together peonies and butterflies represent the message “may you accumulate great blessings, wealth and high social status” (fudie fugue).
The Royal Porcelain Collection, Dresden has a smaller saucer with a peony and butterfly (inv.nr. PO 6508). The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford has a comparable dish decorated, but with lotus flowers (acc.nr. EA1978.1212).
