Page 26 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Song Ceramics

A t a casual glance this elegant bowl might seem like the
archetypal Ding bowl; a closer look makes it clear that this
bowl is on a different plane from most related pieces: its superb
potting, swiftly and masterfully carved design, exquisite glaze and
exceptional size are hard to match among extant Ding wares. The
Ding kilns are known to have produced porcelains for the Northern
Song (960-1127) court, but only occasionally do we come across a
piece so concisely designed and exquisitely crafted that an imperial
provenance springs to mind, and so well preserved that we think of
a carefully protected heirloom piece. The present bowl, one of the
largest examples of its type in existence, is one of those pieces.
Although this superbly styled and executed vessel would seem like
a blue-print for Ding bowls, as its shape and design stand in the
well-known stylistic tradition of the Ding kilns at the peak of their
activity in the Northern Song dynasty, the present bowl stands
out not only because of its large size, but also its distinct, mould-
enhanced shape, the crispness and clarity of its carving with two
lotus blooms and a large leaf and two stems of arrow-head, and the
gloss and tactility of its glaze. It is an individually crafted example 1996, pl. 52, together with a fractionally larger bowl (26.6 cm) with
which seems like an idealised model for a more quickly produced
series of smaller bowls, to which nowhere near the same amount of
time and care could be devoted, and which therefore could not rise
to the same standard.
Celebrated for their thin potting, fine white body, which does not
require a coating of slip to appear white after firing, and their
ivory-coloured glaze, which tends to run down in somewhat darker
‘tears’, Ding wares became renowned for their elegant forms, some
of which derived from contemporaneous silver and lacquer shapes,
but many others – like the present form – were independently
developed by the potters, and found favour with the court and
wealthy monasteries during the Northern Song and Jin (1115-1234)
periods. Due to the fragility of their thinly potted body that was
prone to warping during the potting and firing stages, Ding bowls
of similar type often measure around 22 cm in diameter, but hardly
ever exceed that size. Only some of the wide basins and shallow
moulded dishes from the Ding kilns are larger in diameter, but they
are much more sturdily potted.
The restrained, yet flowing lines of the carved decoration
successfully capture the spirit and grace of the lotus flower, like
brush strokes in contemporary ink painting, while accentuating
the refined quality of the porcelain body. Symbolic of purity and
integrity, because it rises clean out of muddy waters, the lotus was
a popular motif throughout the Song dynasty (960-1279) due to
the Confucian value of personal virtue, and frequently appeared
on white-glazed Ding wares, whose pure glaze tone enhances the
flower’s message.
Comparable bowls are generally smaller and show lotus designs
with only a single bloom. A bowl of similar size (24.9 cm) with a
carved peony design, in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, was
included in the Museum’s exhibition Dingzhou hua ci. Yuan zang
Dingyaoxi baici tezhan/Decorated Porcelains of Dingzhou. White
Ding wares from the collection of the National Palace Museum,
Taipei, 2014, cat. no. II-29; a smaller lotus-decorated bowl (21.8 cm)
in Beijing is published in The Complete Collection of Treasures of
the Palace Museum. Porcelain of the Song Dynasty (I), Hong Kong,
moulded decoration, pl. 44, both from the Qing court collection;
the latter bowl is illustrated again in Ding ci ya ji. Gugong Bowuyuan
zhencang ji chutu Dingyao ciqi huicui/Selection of Ding Ware. The
Palace Museum’s Collection and Archaeological Excavation, Palace
Museum, Beijing, 2012, pl. 65, together with fragments of a large
deep dish (24.6 cm) from the Ding kiln site in Quyang, Hebei
province, pl. 114, with carved dragon design and engraved on the
base with the characters dong gong (‘Eastern Palace’). A slightly
smaller bowl from the Alfred Schoenlicht collection was sold in
our London rooms, 13th December 1955, lot 58 and again 14th
December 1971, lot 194; another was sold in London, 14th July 1981,
lot 77; and a third in these rooms, 2nd May 2000, lot 588 and again
in our London rooms, 16th May 2012, lot 88.