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

A pair of Northern Song silver dishes of very similar six-petal flower shape with less deep sides in the Muwen Tang Collection is illustrated by Kwan in Chinese Silver, Hong Kong, 2004, pp. 154-155, and the author illustrates a line drawing of another very similar silver dish discovered in the underground chamber of Baoyan Temple, erected in the Jin dynasty at Yuyan village, Hu’an, Hebei province, illustrated in Wenwu, 1993, No. 4, pl. 6-5, and in a line drawing on p. 16, no. 31. Kwan notes that the plain elegant style of these flower-shaped dishes was “… fashionable among the upper echelons of Song society… and the form was emulated in lacquer and porcelain of the period.”

Six-petal flower-shaped shallow bowls in white porcelain and green-glazed stoneware discovered in 1969 in the underground chamber of Jingzhi Temple (dedicated 977) are illustrated in the catalogue of the travelling exhibition entitled Chika kyūden no ihō: Chūgoku Kahoku-shō Teishū Hokusō tōki shutsudo bunbutsuten (Treasures from the Underground Palaces: Excavated Treasures from Northern Song Pagodas, Dingzhou, Hebei Province, China), Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, 1997, nos. 71, 73, and 79.

A six-petal flower-shaped silver bowl of very similar form and size excavated in 1970 from a Five Dynasties tomb in Banqiao, Lin’an, Zhejiang province, is illustrated in Wenwu, 1975, Vol. 8, p. 72, no. 7.

Compare also the pair of similar dishes of slightly smaller size from the Kempe Collection illustrated by Gyllensvärd and Scott in Kinesiskt Guld och Silver I Carl Kempe-Samlingen (Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection), Ulricehamn, 1999, p. 209, no. 163.