Page 202 - Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art II

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE ASIAN COLLECTOR
2343
A LONGQUAN CELADON ‘TWIN FISH’ DISH
LATE SOUTHERN SONG-YUAN DYNASTY, 13TH-14TH CENTURY
The rounded sides that rise from the tapering foot to the everted
rim are carved on the exterior with a band of upright petals, and the
center of the interior is relief-decorated with two small fsh, all under
a glaze of sea-green color that also covers the interior of the foot.
8æ in. (22.2 cm.) diam.
$50,000-80,000
PROVENANCE:
John Sparks Ltd., London, November 1950.
Collection of Lord Cunliffe. The Rt. Hon. Rolf, 2nd Baron Cunliffe
of Hedley (1891-1963).
The Cunliffe Collection; Bonham’s London, 11 November 2002, lot
61.
The decorative scheme on this handsome dish claims a variety of
meanings. At its most basic, it can be read simply as two fsh swimming
in the bluish-green waters of the small pond suggested by the dish’s
circular form and aquatic color. But Chinese are fond of plays on words,
particularly of puns based on homonyms, or words that are pronounced
identically but have different meanings. Many Chinese designs thus lend
themselves to presentation as rebuses, or visual puns. Pronounced yú in
Mandarin Chinese, the word for “fsh” is a homonym for “surplus” and, by
extension, “abundance”. Thus, as a visual pun, the fsh can be interpreted
as a wish to the viewer for abundance in all things. Moreover, because
there are two fsh, Chinese viewers would interpret the design as shuangyú, Art, Tokyo, 1982, pl. 51, no. 34.113.8) lacks the rising-lotus-petal décor
which means “double fsh” and, by extension, is an auspicious wish to
the viewer for double abundance or great good fortune. Additionally,
the double-fsh motif stands as a symbol of marital harmony. See, Stacey
Pierson, Designs as Signs: Decoration and Chinese Ceramics, London:
Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London, 2001, p. 19.
200
The popularity of fsh in Chinese art stems from a well-known passage
in chapter 17 of the Daoist text Zhuangzi which recounts that when the
philosopher Zhuangzi (c. 4th century BC) and his friend Huizi were strolling
on a bridge above the Hao River, Zhuangzi exclaimed over the “happiness
of the fshes”. Huizi questioned how Zhuangzi could know that the fsh
were happy. The argument that follows is resolved by Zhuangzi’s fnal
retort, “Let’s go back to the beginning: you asked whence I knew of the
fshes’ happiness, thus already knowing that I knew. I know it just by being
here above the Hao.” (Wendy Swartz, Robert Ford Campany, Yang Lu, and
Jessey J.C. Choo, eds., Early Medieval China: A Sourcebook, New York,
2014, p. 242, note 13.) This favorable mention in a revered classical text
assured fsh of a place in the repertoire of Chinese art motifs.
It likely was a silver vessel from the Tang dynasty that inspired this and
similar Longquan celadon dishes. Although used for inlays and for the
occasional vessel or article of personal adornment since ancient times,
silver and gold gained widespread popularity in China only in the Tang
dynasty, beginning in the seventh century. Vessels in those precious
metals infuenced the shapes of Xing ware, the most famous of the
early porcelains, and also of Tang-dynasty sancai, or ‘three-color’, ware.
Obviously imitating the shape of a Tang silver dish, the famous sancai
footed dish in the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection at The
Asia Society, New York (1979.128), has the same broad fat foor, rounded
cavetto, wide everted lip with thickened edge, and angular transition from
cavetto to lip as the well-known Tang silver dish in the San Diego Museum
of Art. Such broad-rimmed silver dishes most probably count among the
ancestors of the present celadon dish.
A virtually identical dish with twin-fsh motif from the Sakamoto Goro
Collection sold at Sotheby’s New York, 16 September 2014, lot 2. The
related but slightly smaller dish in the Metropolitan Museum (Oriental
Ceramics: The World’s Great Collections, vol. 11: Metropolitan Museum of
that enlivens the exteriors of the present dish and that from the Sakamoto
Collection. An example from the Riesco collection sold twice at Sotheby’s,
London, once in 1984 and again in 1986, and then at Christie’s New York,
on 19 September 2007, lot 260. Another Song example is published in
Longquan Qingci (Longquan Celadon), Beijing, 1966, pl. 32. Yet another,
from the Sir Percival David Collection and now in the British Museum,
London, is illustrated in S. Pierson, Designs as Signs: Decoration and
Chinese Ceramics, London, 2001, pl. 11.
Robert D. Mowry,
Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art Emeritus, Harvard Art Museums,
and Senior Consultant, Christie’s
南宋末/元 龍泉窯青釉雙魚紋盤
(another view)