A large deep dish whose central panel shows a giant elephant with numerous karako (Chinese children) around its feet and swarming over its back beneath a canopy, within two bands of flower heads and Chinese key pattern. Christie’s catalogued it as “A fine Satsuma style deep dish, late 19th century, seal Dai Nippon Meizan sei”, 37.1 cm in diameter. It was offered in New York on 12 October 1979 as lot 194, in a sale that included the Edward H. Williams Collection of Japanese Art.
The catalogue’s introduction (by John H. McDill) records that Williams (1824–1899) exhibited it at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1890. His daughter Anna Dreer gave it in 1924 to the Norman Williams Public Library, Woodstock, Vermont. The introduction singles out “the china by Meizan and Kozan”. Louis Lawrence (2011, p. 188 n. 66) cites this charger as very similar to his pl. 116, with an identical signature. It is also close in size and mark to the charger sold at Bonhams in 2022 (36.5 cm). Whether any of these is the same object is not confirmed.