Page 52 - Song Ceramics From a Distinguished Collection, April 5, 2017 Hong Kong

g. 1
White stoneware bottle, Tang dynasty
© National Museum of China, Beijing
Another long-necked Ding bottle, but of very di erent pro le,
with a mallet-shaped body with angled shoulder, and with
reduced rim, is preserved in the Sir Percival David Collection in
the British Museum, also frequently exhibited and illustrated,
for example, in the International Exhibition of Chinese Art,
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1935-6, cat. no. 1173; together
with the present piece, in the Oriental Ceramic Society Sung
exhibition, 1960, op.cit., cat. no. 16, pl. 14; or in Stacey Pierson,
Song Ceramics. Objects of Admiration, London, 2003, pl. 1.
The high esteem in which a Ding bottle was held at the
Qing court can be gleaned from a much smaller (15.9 cm)
undecorated example with tall slender neck, everted rim
and depressed globular body, with a low footring instead of
a splayed foot, preserved in the National Palace Museum,
Taipei, which was inscribed on the base with a poem by the
Qianlong Emperor dated to the year 1773, apparently the only
comparable piece preserved in the National Palace Museum;
see Yu Peichin, De jia qu. Qianlong Huangdi de taoci pinwei/
Obtaining Re ned Enjoyment: The Qianlong Emperor’s Taste in
Ceramics, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2012, cat. no. 4.
No comparable bottle appears to have come to light either
at the international white ware symposium organised by the
Shanghai Museum in 2002 and recorded in the Proceedings,
Shanghai, 2005, op.cit.
This long-necked bottle shape probably derived from a
form popular throughout the Tang dynasty (618-907) at the
three main kiln centres of Hebei and Henan, Xing, Ding and
Gongxian, which can be traced back to the 5th century and
is ultimately derived from a metal shape; see Zhongguo taoci
50 SOTHEBY’S 㬴ჹ℁
quanji [Complete series on Chinese ceramics], Shanghai,
1999-2000, vol. 4, pl. 246 for a green-splashed white bottle
excavated from a tomb of AD 475; vol. 5, pl. 173, for a pure
white stoneware bottle from a Tang site in Henan province ( g.
1); and Yu Wenrong in Proceedings, Shanghai, 2005, op.cit.,
p. 567, gs 8 d and e, where the latter bottle is compared to a
bronze example.
Sir James Alan Noel Barlow (1881-1968), 2nd Baronet, Knight
of the Order of the Bath and Knight of the Order of the British
Empire, was a renowned British civil servant. Together with his
wife Nora (1885-1989), granddaughter of the English scientist
Charles Darwin, who had developed the Evolutionary Theory,
he collected both Chinese and Islamic art. He was an early
member of the Oriental Ceramic Society, which he generously
supported for decades, serving for a record 28 years on the
Council and a record 18 years as its President, from 1943 to
1961, a period when the Society mounted many of its most
important exhibitions. Since Sir Alan believed in making his
pieces available to a wider public and particularly to students,
upon his death his extensive collection of Chinese archaic
bronzes, ceramics and jades, went rst on display at the
Gulbenkian Museum of Oriental Art at Durham University; from
1974 onwards it was installed in a special, purpose-built gallery
at the newly founded University of Sussex near Brighton; and
in 2012 it was transferred to the Ashmolean Museum, part of
Oxford University, where highlights are currently on display.
Although the bulk of the collection thus remained intact, the
present bottle was one of the very few items not included in
the Trust that owns the bulk of the collection, but kept in the
family, probably until 1986, when it was rst sold in London.