J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York
MenuPast Exhibition
Early Chinese Ceramics: An American Private Collection
March 28 - April 16, 2005
35.
A DINGYAO WHITE PORCELAIN BOWL AND COVER
Song Dynasty, A.D. 12th Century
the deep bowl with steeply rounded sides rising to a plain lipless rim, supported on a small wedge-shaped ring foot, the body divided into seven lobes by vertical grooves below an engraved border around the rim, the shallow domed cover applied in the center with a small stalk-form knop, covered inside and out with a clear glaze ending unevenly above the foot, the glaze pooling in characteristic ‘tear marks’ showing that the bowl was fired upside down, resting on the unglazed rim, the cover glazed to match, with an area left unglazed in the center of the interior of the bowl and a narrow band under the rim of the cover also left unglazed revealing the white porcelaneous body, painted in black ink with an ‘x’ on the unglazed base.
Height 5 1⁄8 inches (13 cm)
Covered bowls of this form, usually lacking the lobes, are found in Ding, Yaozhou and Cizhou wares during the Northern Song and Jin periods. Scholars have suggested that these covered bowls were used to hold water in the making of tea. Water was stored in large jars to allow the impurities to settle to the bottom, and when water was required for tea, it was ladled out into one of these covered bowls.
A plain Dingyao bowl and cover of similar form is illustrated by Krahl in Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyingtang Collection, London, 1994, Vol. I, p. 200, no. 351, and another Dingyao five-lobed bowl lacking a cover is illustrated op. cit., p. 200, no. 348. Compare also the Cizhou brown-splashed and black-glazed covered bowl of similar form from the Falk Collection, illustrated by Mowry in Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown-and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400–1400, Cambridge, 1996, no. 39, p. 144, and the plain white Cizhou covered bowl of this type from the Calmann Collection illustrated in the catalogue of the 1999 special exhibition at the National History Museum, Taiwan, Terre de Neige, de Glace, et d’Ombre: Quatorze siècles d’histoire de la ceramique chinoise à travers les collections du Musée Guimet, Taipei, 1999, no. 61, p. 113.
北宋 定窯蓋碗 高 13 厘米
