Of saucer shape, brilliantly painted in shades of underglaze blue with a 3-legged toad, surrounded by some of the '100 Antiquities', auspicious symbols and symbols of office: in the background five vases of bottle or baluster form, each painted with a different pattern, one containing a fly-whisk, two containing a ruyi-sceptre, the others containing extremely realistic flowers, the centre vase on a three-legged table holding a very large bunch of prunus. Amusingly the vases are exquisitely painted in fine detail with the decoration of white on blue, rather than the reverse one would expect to find on Kangxi porcelain of blue on white. However there is a certain group of blue and white porcelain made in this period where the decoration is white on blue. Indeed the detail is so intricate that various patterns are discernible including the bottle vase on the left which would appear to be decorated with a hawthorn pattern. A tray next to the table holds a cauldron of archaic bronze form and a cup with three bowls, next to them two books decorated with a flower pattern and at the front a fan, a conch shell, two bowls, one on a table and a scroll open to depict the symbol of Yin and Yang; all within a ruyi-head and lappet border, the back decorated with three flower scrolls, the centre with a double blue ring enclosing a painting of a censer in underglaze blue on the base.
Literature
The Chinese made no clear distinction between the frog and the toad. The 3-legged toad was said to exist only in the moon and thus represented the unattainable. In the legend, Hsi Wang Mu stole the Elixir of Immortality from her husband Chieftain Hou I (circa 2500 B.C.) and fled to the moon, where the gods transformed her into a toad and the Chinese could trace her outline. The toad also symbolised money-making. Liu Hai, a tenth-century official, possessed one which would convey him wherever he wished to go. It would sometimes escape down the nearest well but Liu Hai could fish it out with a line baited with gold coins. A popular representation of him with one foot on the toad and a line baited with 5 cash is known as ?Liu Hai sporting with the Toad? and is considered extremely auspicious. Another story has Liu Hai hooking a venomous toad from a well with a gold cash and killing it, the moral being that money lures men to their ruin.
The Yin and the Yang together constitute the Tao, the eternal reason of heaven and earth, with origins in the Chinese principle of dualism.
