Each dish is moulded with peaches and butterflies within a foliate rim. Further, the centre is decorate with a fine karashishi playing amongst peonies, the rim decorated with the three friends, pine, prunus and bamboo. Shibata includes a slightly smaller example, #3321, and dates the design to the third quarter of the 18th century.

Approximately 18.2 cm diameter. Perfect condition...

The bowl is moulded in a form based upon a chrysanthemum flower, the interior with further flowers and brocaded bands, the exterior with simple stems of foliage. Within the foot-rim is a six-character apocryphal Chinese Ming reign mark for Chenghua.

Sotheby's London sold a very similar bowl ( 20.1 cm dia.) in 1990 for GBP 880, how times have changed!

Approximately 17.6 cm diameter, 5.8 cm high...

Charles Marie Joseph Alfred Touchemolin was born in Strasbourg, 9th November, 1829, died in Brighton, UK, 1907. A noted painter, mostly of military subjects.

The technique used is somewhat unusual, as well as opaque water colour extensive use has been made of pencil (on top) and scraffito, to expose the white ground. Indeed, the signature is created using scraffito.

Approximately 18.7 x 12.2 cm...

A beautiful and skilled painting of a flowering stem , painted in opaque water colour on a deep blue-grey ground. The paper is burnished on the back. India, 19th century or earlier.

Approximately 30.5 cm x 17.5 cm. Good condition but a short tear on the edge repaired with tape on the back...

The former owner of this fine watercolour painting assured me that although it is unsigned it was by a British military officer, Alan David Greenhill-Gardyne. He was commissioned into the Gordon Highlanders in 1888 and was with the Regiment at the Relief of Chitral in 1895. He took part in other North-West Frontier operations and later in the Boer War, he was wounded in the Great War...

An attractive set of five Japanese Arita porcelain square dishes with canted corners, each decorated with an oversized sage by a lake. The borders completely painted with figures in a landscape. By repute once part of the Bigelow Collection and disposed of by auction in New England. Late 18th ~ early 19th century.

Approximately 15.5cm square...

A couldn't resist this supper dish although it is not in the best condition. I love the painting of the two figures, one perhaps a 'foreigner', who appear to be releasing a caged bird.

Approximately 14.6 cm maximum dimension. As found, corner missing, two shallow chips to edge, gilt rubbed...

Ebisu, one of the gods of good fortune, is always depicted in a courtier's dress or a courtier's formal hunting outfit. He is often encountered appearing to struggle with a giant red snapper or sea bream, tai. Although a little grimy this is a fine sculpture and is signed Ryumon zo. It dates from the Meiji period.

Approximately 28cm high. The sculpture weighs approximately 7kg...

A Chinese paper fan with bamboo sticks, the paper centre is varnished in order to stiffen the paper. The bamboo sticks are decorated with a hot point, a technique known in the West as pyrography. There is a worn out silk tassel with a large amethyst bead.

Approximately 30 cm long. The fan is in fine condition overall but one or two on the bamboo inner sticks have short splits...

These three Chinese soapstone seal blanks came from a small collection of items that must have arrived in the UK at the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th...

The jardiniere enamelled overall with formal scrolling lotus beneath a ruyi border and above lappets. The inside is thickly counter enamelled with blue. This is quite substantially made and so quite heavy.

Approximately 14.5 cm high, 19 cm diameter. Weight = 950 gm. Fine condition but the jardiniere has received a small knock to the side resulting is a small loss of enamel inside, but virtually nothing to see on the outsi...

A rare Arita porcelain urinal made for export to the West, probably the Netherlands, at the beginning of the 18th century. This is not the kind of export item encountered often so perhaps it was made as the result of a private commission by a trader. The enamel decoration was applied in Holland, 'Amsterdams Bont', in order to make the item fit in with the new fashionable coloured porcelains arriving from Japan at the time.

Approximately ...