Bowl on footring, spreading rim. Decorated in underglaze blue with a sitting kylin, a Fo-dog and another mythical animal with hooves, a dragon’s head and a bushy tail sitting by a fence. Inside around the rim a band with groups of pine needles, inside on the base a hare and bamboo. On the base the four-character mark Yadetang zhi (made for the hall of elegant virtue). Stylistically, this bowl has many characterisitcs of later transitional porcelain, such as the three mythical animals and the groups of pine needles. The character yade in the mark is written in such a way that Yadetang can be read in two ways, namely as ‘the hall of elegant virtue’, or as ‘the hall of the virtue of crows’. It is unclear if this is a misspelling or an intentional wordplay. Crows symbolise children’s devotion to their parents. The third mythical animal is probably another manifestation of the kylin. For the symbolic meaning of the hare, see cat. 43.