PROVENANCE: From the Collections of Gerald Simpson (1925-2018) born in a rural area of north Gilmer County, GA. His family moved to Cartersville, GA in 1926. He later joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) before volunteering for the United States Marine Corps when he was 17. After basic training at Parris Island, SC, Harold volunteered for Radio Gunner School and received flight training for SBD Dive Bombers. A World War 2 combat veteran, he served Marine Air Corps in the Pacific Theater, including campaigns in the Solomon Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Marshall Islands and the Mariana Islands. Among his varied interests and passions were collecting Silver and Porcelain art pieces, gardening, traveling and watching John Wayne movies. Dimensions (cm): Diameter: 53 Height: 10 Chinese Ming Dynasty Period Blue & white Qilin Motif Large Plate. The porcelain potted in shallow vessel form, thick and large, with broad wide central interior, rounded cavetto gently tapering to open wide, with a straight open lip, raised with round shallow draft, slight concave base. All reserved hand painted ornamentations are rendered in clean white under glazed base color which contrast against the cobalt blue fine color. The Central interior depicted of mighty Qilin mythical beast surrounded with flaming vapors, flowers blooms and grass. The rim decorated with snarling huge imperial five claws dragon careening through cumulus clouds above thrashing Li-shui waves in a dark blue color dragon squama to chasing flaming pearl amidst flames and vapors. Each section mark off and enclosed with double fine blue rings lines. A characteristic heaped and piled effect, the under glaze grayish-blue concentrates in certain areas, bubbling through the surface of the glaze and turning a deep blue-black. This inadvertently gave texture, energy, and shading to the design. The glaze is seamless and gives off a beautiful luster, with the colors maintaining excellent vibrancy. The foot base rim reveals the cut edges during the making process, the base left unglazed with grayish creme-brown ground and dark spots of firing marks.