Page 156 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Song Ceramics

Q ingbai-glazed ewers with their matching warming bowls were
popular among the gentry of the Northern Song period
(960-1127). The present piece is particularly charming because of the
expressively modelled lion on its cover, and rare due to its relief petal
decoration. Numerous contemporary paintings depict ewers of this
type, being used to serve wine; see for example three related ceramic
ewers and their matching bowls portrayed in the hanging scroll
Literary Gathering, attributed to the Huizong Emperor
(r. 1101-1125), in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in the
catalogue to the Museum’s exhibition Precious as the Morning Star,
Taipei, 2016, p. 41. Spur marks on the ewer corresponding to marks
inside the bowl confirm that this group was conceived as a set.
A slightly smaller set of this type was sold in our New York rooms,
23rd March 2004, lot 619; another at Christie’s London, 12th
December 1988, lot 16; and a third, lacking the relief petals on the
shoulder and cover of the ewer and the foot of the bowl, in the
Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in The Complete Collection
of Treasures in the Palace Museum. Porcelain of the Song Dynasty
(II), Hong Kong, 1996, pl. 153, together with a warming bowl only,
pl. 192. See also two related qingbai ewers and bowls excavated in
Anhui province, one unearthed from the tomb of Wu Zhengchen and
his wife in Susong county, Anhui province, datable to the second
year of the Yuanyou period (1087), illustrated in Historical Relics
Unearthed in New China, Beijing, 1972, pl. 175; the other, recovered
from a tomb dated in accordance with 1086, published in Sekai tōji
zenshū/ Ceramic Art of the World, vol. 12, Tokyo, 1977, pl. 152.

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