Two figures of scholars, both sitting on a lotus resting on a square base with indented corners. One wears a flat cap and holds a ruyi sceptre in his left hand. The other holds a flywhisk in his right hand and his hair has been arranged in a topknot. Dark brown glaze. The flat unglazed base has a hole in the middle and has a blackened textile imprint. The clay is thin and somewhat grey; the figure is hollow, relatively light in weight and has vertical seams resulting from its being made in a mould. These two figures clearly belong together, having the same brown iron oxide glaze, identical bases and being approximately the same size and weight. Exactly w ho the figures represent is unknown. They were possibly once part of a large group of similar figurines. The lotus seat has Buddhist connotations. Brown-glazed blanc de chine is mentioned in Donnelly's standard work (ref.) and also in an archeologically oriented catalogue on Dehua porcelain of the Fujian Provincial Museum and the Fung Ping Shan Museum in Hong Kong, where a brown-glazed Guanyin is dated to the Ming period (Hong Kong). The Groninger Museum, Groningen, has a small brown Fo-dog (Cochius, cat. 32) and Blumenfield h...