J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York

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Past Exhibition

Chinese Porcelain and Silver in the Song Dynasty

March 18 - April 8, 2002

22.
A CARVED YINGQING PORCELAIN ‘BOYS AND FLOWERS’ BOWL

Song Dynasty, A.D. 11th-12th Century

of thinly potted conical form, freely engraved on the interior of the gently rounded flaring sides with a dense pattern of two boys clambering amidst stylized peony blooms and feathery sprays of foliage, encircling a small sketchily drawn floral medallion in the recessed center, all enclosed by a scallop-edged border, the thin lipless rim and the underside left plain, the glaze of pale sky-blue tone, pooling darker in the engraved lines and highlighting the design, continuing over the wedge-shaped edge of the ring foot, the center of the base unglazed revealing the white porcelain body and showing a burnt ring from the firing support.

Diameter 8 inches (20.4 cm)

A Yingqing conical bowl carved with this pattern, from the Hellner Collection, is illustrated by Jan Wirgin in Sung Ceramic Designs, Stockholm, 1970, pl. 20b, together with a line drawing of a similar bowl excavated in Zhejiang province, fig. 29d (I).  Other examples are illustrated in Zhongguo Taoci Quanji: Song, (The Complete Works of Chinese Ceramics: Song Dynasty), Vol. 8, Shanghai, 2000, no. 167, from the Collection of Shanghai Museum, and in the Illustrated Catalogue of Tokyo National Museum, Chinese Ceramics, Vol. I, p. 98, no. 384 from the Collection of Dr. Yokogawa Tamisuke.