Vase with landscape and poem by Zhu Xi

By the end of the Ming dynasty, private kilns were producing high-end porcelains decorated with vibrant blue-and-white paintings. Diverging from the imperial court’s standardized patterns, these illustrations feature lively imagery such as scenes from popular dramas and historical narratives. The example here depicts a spring outing from a poem written by the influential neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi (1130–1200).