Chen Mingyuan, one of the most famous and versatile Yixing potters, was active during the Kangxi/Yongzheng periods (1662-1735). He made not only teapots but also articles for the scholar's table, many simulating objects from nature such as those in the K.S. Lo Collection, now in the Flagstaff House Museum Tea Ware, illustrated in The Art of the Yixing Potter, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1990, pp. 139-142. Among those in the K.S. Lo Collection are illustrated with the artist's sealmarks, ibid., a flowering prunus branch, no. 19; a caltrop fruit, no. 20, a water-chestnut, no. 21; a walnut, no. 22; peanuts, no. 23; a chestnut, no. 24, and an arrowroot, no. 25. A similar cup in the form of a conch shell also bearing the seal of Chen Mingyuan is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 10, Tokyo, 1980, pl. 244.