Five Dynasties, A.D. 10th Century
with flat flaring sides rising from a broad base with shallow rounded well, incised with a pinwheel-shaped flowerhead filling the center and six fan-shaped leaf motifs in a broad band between line borders on the sides, the iron-rich body covered with white slip, the lines of decoration freely drawn through the slip and covered with a translucent olive-green glaze, the exterior plain, showing the white slip falling unevenly and ending low on the sides, the celadon glaze continuing over the ring foot and across the countersunk base with three spur marks from firing supports just inside the footrim, the gray stoneware body burnt dark brown where the glaze drains thin around the foot.
Diameter 8 1⁄4 inches (21.9 cm)
An early Yaozhou celadon bowl of similar form, decorated in the same technique with a very similar pattern on the petal-lobed flaring sides and broad interior base is illustrated in Wudai Huangpu yaozhi (Excavations of the Five Dynasties Period Kiln-Site at Huangpu in Tongchuan, Shaanxi), Beijing, 1997, pl. 45-2, and in line drawings, p. 99, fig. 54-4.
Compare also the similarly decorated Yaozhou celadon bowl with rounded sides excavated in 1991 at the Yaozhou kiln site at Huangpu in Tongchuan, Shaanxi and now in the Yaozhou Ware Museum, illustrated in the catalogue of the exhibition at The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, entitled The Masterpieces of Yaozhou Ware, Osaka, 1997, p. 101, no. 134. Another Yaozhou celadon bowl with similar decoration, also excavated in 1991 at the Huangpu kiln site and now in the Yaozhou Ware Museum, is illustrated by Zhang (ed.) in Zhongguo chutu ciqi quanji (15) Shaanxi (Complete Collection of Ceramic Art Unearthed in China, Vol. 15, Shaanxi Province), Beijing, 2008, p. 101, no. 101.
五代 耀州青瓷劃花菊瓣卷草紋盤 徑 21.9 厘米
Five Dynasties, A.D. 10th Century
Diameter 8 1⁄4 inches (21.9 cm)