Page 93 - Sotheby's Arcadian beauty Song Pottery Oct. 3, 2018

fig. 1
Black lacquer barbed dish, Southern Song dynasty
© Collection of the Tokyo National Museum
Image: TNM Images Archives

This dish has delicate rounded sides divided into seven is illustrated in N.S. Bromelle and Perry Smith, eds, Urushi,
bracket foliations, rising from a recessed centre with Proceedings of the Urushi Study Group, June 10-27, 1985,
corresponding foliate edges to an everted rim of conforming Tokyo, Tokyo, 1988, p. 212, fig. 12. X-ray radiography has
outline. The thin wooden core is lacquered a deep black, revealed it to be created with the dry lacquer technique on a
and its base marked Yu Zhang in red lacquer within a double fabric core that was stretched over a mould. Another slightly
lozenge. Taking a ‘water caltrop’ shape, the dish evokes a smaller black lacquer dish of the same seven-lobed form, from
lotus in full blossom, an impression gracefully reinforced by a the collection of the Tokyo National Museum, was included in
stylised, overlapping floral pattern on its back rarely seen on the exhibition Toyo no Shikkogei/Oriental Lacquer Arts, Tokyo
heirlooms. National Museum, Tokyo, 1977, cat. no. 430 (fig. 1), together
with a larger octafoil red lacquer dish, pl. 482; the seven-lobed
Elegant simplicity is characteristic of Song lacquerware, best
example is illustrated again, in colour, in Hai-wai Yi-chen, Qiqi/
exemplified by works of yise or monochrome lacquer. While
Chinese Art in Overseas Collections: Lacquerware, Taipei,
the preferred choice was black, other colours such as red,
1987, pl. 42. There is also in the Tokyo exhibition a red lacquer
brown, ochre and yellow could also be seen. Archaeological
example with eleven brackets, a circular centre and fluted
excavations have recovered a substantial amount of
sides that do not fully conform to the bracket foliations of the
monochrome lacquerware in Song tombs, suggesting its great
rim; see Toyo no Shikkogei, op. cit., cat. no. 482. This piece
popularity among the nobility as an expensive object of use,
is now in the Museum für Lackkunst, Münster, Germany,
whether for daily or funerary purposes.
and is published again, in colour, in Monika Kopplin, ed.,
The Song and Yuan dynasties have exerted a formative The Monochrome Principle: Lacquerware and Ceramics of
influence on the development of lacquerware in China. The the Song and Qing Dynasties, Munich, 2008, p. 113, pl. 22.
lacquerware from the period, whether excavated, privately Another red dish of this type with nine bracket foliations and
collected or preserved as heirlooms, all points to a dynamic a circular centre, from the collection of Sir Harry and Lady
contemporary dialogue between lacquer, ceramics, gold and Garner, was included in the exhibition Chinese Art under
silver as media of artistic production, a cross-influence that the Mongols: The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), The Cleveland
has come under scholarly attention. Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1968, cat. no. 282.
A slightly smaller seven-lobed dish also with a bracket-
lobed centre, in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.,

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