This large blue-and-white plate is decorated with auspicious motifs of pheonixes in the four cartouches at the rim and five-clawed dragons in the quartrefoil panel. Two of the dragons hold a lotus with the character 'wan' in between while the other two dragons, swastikas. The middle dragon upholds a basket of fruits with character 'shou' on top. 'Wan shou' literally means 'long life ten thousand fold' - traditionally lucky Chinese characters. The dragon and the pheonix together represent the emperor and the empress. The underside of the plate bears an underglaze-blue six-character Wanli reign mark in two columns.Most of Wanli porcelains were blue-and-white wares that included a wide and varied assortment of ceramics. However, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw the deterioration in the quality of Ming porcelain due to huge demands from the imperial court as well as from export trade. Little experimentation occured during this period.
