Page 204 - 2019 September 11th Sotheby's Important Chinese Art

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PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT AMERICAN COLLECTION Another closely related example, but of slightly smaller
A LARGE ‘CIZHOU’ WHITE-GLAZED size and carved in the more usual manner to reveal the buff
SGRAFFIATO VASE pottery body, is in the Freer Sackler Museum, Washington
LIAO DYNASTY D.C., and illustrated in several books including, Freedom
of Clay and Brush Through Seven Centuries in Northern
China: Tz’u-Chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis
the finely potted body of elegantly sinuous baluster form,
the swelling shoulders rising to a slender elongated neck Museum of Art, Indianapolis, 1980 cat. no. 14. The Freer
surmounted by a flaring cupped mouth with galleried rim Sackler vase is illustrated again along with another of this
and supported on a chamfered splayed foot, the rounded more common type sold at Christie’s New York, March
sides deftly carved with a wide frieze of scrolling leaves with 18th-19th 2009, lot 508. For a further related vase of the
delicately incised veining and frilled edges, set between a same form and decoration but more roughly incised, see the
band of overlapping lotus petals and a scallop-edged border, example excavated from a Liao tomb in Liaoning province
applied overall with a pearl-white slip beneath a lustrous now preserved in the Liaoning Provincial Museum, illustrated
colorless glaze, the foot left unglazed revealing the buff body in Zhongguo taoci quanji [Complete Series of Chinese
Height 18⅞ in., 48 cm Ceramics], vol. 9, Shanghai, 2000, pl. 3.
PROVENANCE $ 50,000-70,000
Christie’s London, 6th June 1994, lot 102.
Bai Ma Xuan Collection.
Sotheby’s New York, 21st-22nd September 2005, lot 31. 遼 磁州窰白釉花葉紋盤口瓶
The graceful lines of this sumptuous attenuated form are 來源
made all the more luxurious by the effect of the luminous 倫敦佳士得1994年6月6日，編號102
glaze over the lushly foliate-carved layer of moon-white 白馬軒收藏
slip. The transparent glaze glides over the carved surface
and pools in the recesses, highlighting the three registers 紐約蘇富比2005年9月21至22日，編號31
of carved decoration that conform perfectly to the sinuous
form. A vase of similar form, impressive height and nearly
identical decoration is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York and illustrated in Ceramics of the Liao Dynasty,
China Institute in America, New York 1973. cat. no. 29.

202 SOTHEBY’S IMPORTANT CHINESE ART