A Chinese porcelain punch bowl painted in famille rose enamels and gilt. With rounded, spreading sides, painted on one side in a ground of black-and-gold hexagonal diaper within a panel framed in gilt scrollwork with figures on a garden terrace, a man, ladies and children round a table, and a group round a table with a lotus in a vase (which forms a rebus: lotus = he and vase = ping, thus reading heping, or ‘peace’). On the reverse are shaped cameos with birds on branches and goats on a riverbank. Inside, in the centre, are flower sprays, and round the rim, a spearhead border.

Text adapted from Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen: Volume II.