Page 58 - Sotheby's Part II Collection of Sir Joeseph Hotung Collection CHINESE ART , Oct. 9, 2022

FISH WITHIN A CAMEO OF PEONIES

REGINA KRAHL

This dish is unique and was done with an attention to detail that is covered with a blue wash but carefully painted with a striated,
exceptional even among this rare group of relief-moulded dishes scalloped wave pattern. The sophisticated organization of the
of the Yuan dynasty. Not only is its relief decoration extraordinarily design and the amount of individual manual labour required for its
crisp and detailed, but the popular fish design is here also rendered completion are phenomenal. Fish designs were very popular for
in a highly individual manner that knows few close comparisons. It Yuan blue-and-white dishes, but are almost invariably painted overall
is a masterpiece that combines the best and rarest Yuan blue-and- in the ‘positive’ blue-on-white style, with a simple painted flower scroll
white styles. around the inner sides, and usually have a circular rim, as for example
a dish in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (F1971.3) (fig. 1)
This dish may be the only example where the fish design is joined – a treatment that could be accomplished in a fraction of the time by
with ‘negative’ decoration in reserved white relief, and the relief well-trained hands, which could rapidly re-create practically identical
design on this dish is spectacular. The moulded peony scroll is pieces on a kind of production line. The present dish exemplifies
unusually lush and was so generously planned that the artisans had to the laborious technique that creates this cameo effect at its most
reduce it again slightly before painting the centre, cutting into some successful. It was clearly far too labour-intensive to be used more
of the leaves to create a good circular space for the fish painting. regularly and was therefore soon completely abandoned.
The peonies are extraordinarily intricate, each petal with frilly edges,
and petals and leaves with pronounced veining, a far cry from the Fragments of several dishes painted with a fish among water plants
anhua, ‘hidden decoration’, known from contemporary white wares, have been excavated from the site of the Tughlaq fortress Kotla
although probably similarly created through impression of the design Firuz Shah, outside Delhi, that had been built in 1354, not much
on a mould into a layer of white slip. The impression of the lace-like occupied after 1388 and destroyed already in 1398. One among
white flowers is here so well defined and complex, however, that them, apparently with a lotus scroll reserved in white, but probably
some details may have been added by hand in form of trailed slip. not moulded, is inscribed in Nastaliq lettering with the term for ‘the
royal kitchen’ (Ellen Smart, Fourteenth Century Chinese Porcelain
A nice detail that visually increases the depth of the design are from a Tughlaq Palace in Delhi, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic
the two overlapping leaves that are outlined in blue. Even the Society, vol. 41, 1975-77, pl. 78b); the others are all painted exclusively
background against which the flowers are raised was not simply in blue on white (ibid. pls 75c, 78c, 79b, 80a, 81a, and a bowl, pl. 90c).

fig. 1
A blue and white 'mandarin fish' dish, Yuan dynasty
© Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.:
Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1971.3
ྡɓ
ʩcڡڀ᜛௡˥ᘷ७ᆵ
© ശସ཭̦੗ಌኪึНлဧߕஔ᎜c˸ Charles Lang Freer
࣏ᗍਿږᒅᔛcF1971.3

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