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

This classic Song design, emblematic of fidelity and a happy marriage, is particularly associated with the Ding kilns in Hebei province during the Northern Song period and it appears on various shapes of Ding bowls and dishes. This particular dish, following a silver prototype, is one of the most successful shapes decorated with this distinctive motif.

A Dingyao dish of this form carved with the same pattern, from the Imperial Palace Collection in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, is illustrated in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Ting Ware White Porcelain, Taipei, 1987, no. 77. A very similar dish with the rim bound in copper, in the Percival David Foundation, London is illustrated by Lovell in The Illustrated Catalogue of Ting Yao and Related White Wares, London, 1964, no. 160. The same dish is illustrated in color in A Hundred Masterpieces of Chinese Ceramics from the Percival David Foundation, Tokyo, 1980, col. pl. 6, the catalogue of a special exhibition sent to four museums in Japan in 1980.

Another similar example with a metal-bound rim, in the Freer Gallery of Art, is illustrated in the catalogue of selected masterpieces entitled The Freer Gallery of Art, Vol. I: China, J. A. Pope ed., Tokyo, 1972, no. 92 and the same dish is illustrated again in Oriental Ceramics: The World’s Great Collections, Vol. 9, Tokyo, 1981, no. 58. Another example, from the Collection of Lord Cunliffe, is illustrated by Krahl in Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, Vol. I, London, 1994, p. 204, no. 357.