A large Chinese blue and white 'Ode to the red cliffs' bowl, Transitional period Dia.: 22 cm - H.: 10 cm  Almost all bowls of this type are of smaller size. The bowl is decorated in underglaze blue with a scene and text from the Song Dynasty poem 'Ode to the Red Cliffs' (by Su Shih, 1036-1101). It is inscribed on the inside with a four-character Yongle mark. Red Cliffs bowls were popular during the second quarter of the 17th Century in Europe because of their mysterious inscriptions and were also found in the cargo of the sunken Tek Sing junk which sank in the South China Sea in 1635.  Provenance: A Dutch private collection