Page 102 - Sotheby's Arcadian beauty Song Pottery Oct. 3, 2018

fig. 3
Sakamoto Gorō and Edward T. Chow at Chateau-Banquet in Geneva, circa 1970s

Sakamoto Gorō (1923-2016) was a celebrated dealer whose “The Northern Song is famed as an age […] of magnificent
career in the Asian art world spanned almost 70 years. A painting and calligraphy, of matchless ceramics […] The
series of sales from his personal collection – ranging from scholar-official elite […] patronized the craftsmen who
lacquer and porcelain to stone sculpture and Buddhist made, to their tastes, the ceramics and all the beautiful
bronzes - have been offered in our rooms over the years and objects they collected, treasured, and used in their daily
the successes warrant the fact that his collection remains lives.” 1
one of the most coveted provenances for a piece of Chinese
If Frederick W. Mote’s insight provides a peephole into the
art. The Clark Ding Basin, which holds the third highest price
new high culture of the Northern Song, the current ‘bubble’
for Song ceramics sold at auction (after the two Ru guanyao
bowl, with its unparalleled spectacular sheen and illustrious
washers sold in these rooms in 2012 and 2017 respectively)
provenance, must serve as a tangible window into a renaissant
also came from the collection of Sakamoto Gorō.
aesthetic that was marked by modesty and naturalism -
hitherto avant-garde - but has evidently stood the test of time.

1 Frederick W. Mote, Imperial China 900-1800, Cambridge, 1999, reprint, Cambridge,
2015, p. 151.

100 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比