Dish

The linglong-ci ("clever porcelain") of the rice-grain type is carved with many openwork rice-shaped openings on the biscuit, then covered with transparent glaze to form patterns that are visible through light. Originating in hongzhou kiln of Jiangxi during the Sui-Tang period, this type of decoration did not develop widely until the fifteenth century. In the Qing dynasty, both imperial and private shops produced dishes of this type. Two rice-grain dragons play with pearls on the sides of the plate, with wave patterns incised on the exterior. The mark, reading jingweitang-zhi ("produced by Jingwei Hall"), has been identified as that of a private studio of the Qianlong period (Geng 1993: 383).