J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York
MenuPast Exhibition
Chinese Porcelain and Silver in the Song Dynasty
March 18 - April 8, 2002
25.
A YINGQING PORCELAIN OPENWORK CENSER
Northern Song Dynasty (A.D. 960-1127)
the domed cover elaborately pierced and carved with a continuous frieze of foliate scroll motif encircling a matching central medallion, the base moulded in relief with lotus petals and raised on short trefoil feet, all covered with a translucent glaze of aquamarine tone, the interior unglazed showing the white porcelain body and the base with three unglazed areas showing typical dark burn marks from the kiln supports.
Height 2 1⁄2 inches (6.3 cm)
A similar Yingqing openwork censer is illustrated by Krahl in Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, Vol. I, London, 1994, p. 329, no. 611, where the author mentions a miniature silver censer with similar openwork cover, raised on a much more elaborate base, which was excavated from the underground palace dedicated beneath the Tianfeng pagoda at Ningpo, Zhejiang province, which was built in A.D. 1144-5, illustrated in Wenwu, 1991, No. 6, pl. 3, fig. 2.
Compare also the similar Yingqing tripod censer with pierced cover which was excavated in 1981 from a site near Jingdezhen in Boyang county and now is in the Jiangxi Provincial Museum, illustrated in Zhongguo Taoci Quanji: Song, (The Complete Works of Chinese Ceramics: Song Dynasty), Vol. 8, Shanghai, 2000, no.171.
Another Yingqing censer of related form, illustrated in Selected Masterpieces of the Manno Collection, Osaka, 1988, no.84, has been designated by the Japanese government as an Important Art Object, and the same censer is illustrated again by Wirgin in Sung Ceramic Designs, Stockholm, 1970, pl. 23f.
