J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York
MenuPast Exhibition
Silver and Gold in Ancient China
March 16 – April 14, 2012
23.
AN OCTAFOIL SILVER ‘TWIN BIRDS’ DISH
Southern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1127-1279)
decorated with a pair of long-tailed songbirds shown with wings displayed, flying in opposite directions amidst scattered leafy floral sprays, all incised in fine lines and fully detailed within an octafoil reserve filling the flat center of the dish, the plain flaring shallow sides also divided into eight rounded lobes and the flat rim with raised lip of conforming outline, decorated on top of the rim with a running band of ‘classic scroll’ incised in a dotted line technique, interrupted by a stamped inscription which includes two characters which may be read as san lang (三郎) and two other indecipherable characters.
Diameter 5 1⁄2 inches (14 cm)
Similar designs of twin birds in flight are seen on Song silver boxes discovered in 1959 in a hoard buried at a temple site in Deyang county, Sichuan, published in an excavation report entitled ‘Sichuan Deyang chutu de Song dai yinqi jianjie’ (An Introduction of Song Dynasty Silver Excavated at Deyang, Sichuan) in Wenwu, 1961, No. 11, pp. 48-52, illustrated in line drawings on p. 52, nos. 15-16.
The same stamped inscription appears on a set of ten silver dishes excavated in 1996 from a hoard containing late Song – early Yuan objects, illustrated in Hunan chutu jinyinqi (Gold and Silver Excavated in Hunan), Changsha, 2009, pp. 97-106, with detail images of two of the inscriptions on pp. 98 and 99.
南宋 八曲花鳥紋銀碟 徑 14 厘米
23.
AN OCTAFOIL SILVER ‘TWIN BIRDS’ DISH
Southern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1127-1279)
Diameter 5 1⁄2 inches (14 cm)