Song Dynasty (A.D. 960–1279)
covered overall with a thick and glossy glaze of opaque pale grayish-green tone, showing an irregular crackle throughout, with a recessed circular center and wide flaring sides rising to an everted lip divided into six shallow lobes, the glaze thinning slightly at the rim to show a darker edge, standing on a well-finished small ring foot with unglazed edge revealing the purplish-brown ware.
Diameter 5 1⁄4 inches (13.3 cm)
Ex Collection Lord Cunliffe, no. 3.
Exhibited on loan at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, 2002–2003.
A Guanyao dish of this same form, from the Imperial Palace Collection, now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, is illustrated in Song Guanyao Tezhan (Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Sung Dynasty Kuan Ware), Taipei, 1989, no. 126.
Compare also the Guanyao dish of slightly larger size, in the Percival David Foundation, illustrated by Tregear in Song Ceramics, London, 1982, p. 139, no. 189.
宋 官窯葵瓣口盤 徑 13.3 厘米
Song Dynasty (A.D. 960–1279)
Diameter 5 1⁄4 inches (13.3 cm)