Page 107 - Important Chinese Art, Sotheby's London May 15 2019

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A ‘CIZHOU’ SGRAFFIATO ‘PEONY’
MEIPING
NORTHERN SONG/JIN DYNASTY
the tapering baluster body rising from a
recessed base to a rounded shoulder and
narrow short neck with broad everted rim,
carved around the exterior through the brown
and black glaze with a broad leafy peony scroll,
all reserved on a white ground between stylised
key-fret and lotus lappet bands
29.3 cm, 11⅝ in.

‡ £ 30,000-50,000
HK$ 308,000-515,000 US$ 39,300-65,500
北宋/金 磁州白地剔黑彩牡丹紋
梅瓶

Boldly carved with a floral scroll fired to a
purplish-brown tone on one side and deep black
on the other, this jar belongs to a distinct group
of Cizhou wares decorated with sgraffiato floral
motifs. This technique involved the application
of two different-coloured slips – a layer of white
followed by a layer of black slip. The motif was
carefully carved through the black sip to reveal
the white layer beneath. Fragments of meiping
decorated with this technique have been un-
earthed at the Guantai kilns in Henan province,
and illustrated in The Cizhou Kiln Site at Guantai,
Beijing, 1997, col pl. XXI, fig. 2 (top right).
The present vase is unusual for the keyfret band
above the foot, a motif that probably derives
from the square spiral pattern commonly found
on archaic bronze wares. While bands of keyfret
are relatively common on Cizhou sgraffiato
wares, they seldom appear on meiping of this
type. Compare a vase with slightly rounder
shoulders and lacking the keyfret, in the British
Museum, London, illustrated in Jessica Rawson,
Chinese Ornament: The Lotus and the Dragon,
London, 1984, pl. 62a; a slightly larger one in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
illustrated Suzanne G. Valenstein, A Handbook
of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989, pl. 88;
another in the Worcester Art Museum, included
in the exhibition Freedom of Clay and Brush
Through Seven Centuries in Northern China:
Tz’u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., India-
napolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, 1981, cat.
no. 39; and a further vase in the Kyoto National
Museum, illustrated in Sekai tōji zenshū / Ce-
ramic Art of the World, 1955, vol. 10, pl. 94.

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