Page 47 - Chiense Silver and Gold, 2012, J.J. Lally, New York

20. A P arcel-Gilt Silver Flower -Shaped Bowl
Late Tang/Five Dynasties, A.D. 9th–10th Century

decorated in high relief on the interior with a large roundel of a pair of long-tailed birds flying in
opposite directions, each holding in its beak the scrolled end of a long undulating stem bearing
flowers and fruit also in high relief, reserved on a punched ground of fine rings and enclosed by
a narrow border of raised bosses surrounded by a wider engraved border of overlapping petal
motifs, the steep flaring sides divided into five petal lobes by indented grooves on the exterior and
corresponding raised ribs on the interior, the rim canted out and engraved with foliate scroll on a
ring-punched ground below the lip on the interior, the decoration at the rim and in the roundel all
picked out in gilding, contrasting with the ring-punched ground, the flat base of the bowl raised on
a slightly splayed high ring foot.
Diameter 5 ⁄8 inches (13 cm)
1
A very similar Tang dynasty silver footed bowl decorated with twin birds and scrolling vines on a finely punched ‘pearl’
ground, in the collection of the Cultural Relics Administration Committee of Wugong county, Xianyang, Shaanxi province,
is illustrated in Xianyang Wenwu jinghua (The Cream of Xianyang Relics), Xianyang, 2002, p. 67. Another silver footed bowl
of this form with similar decoration, excavated in 1982 at Dingmaoqiao, Dantu county, Jiangsu province, is illustrated by
Rastelli (ed.) in the catalogue of the special exhibition, China at the Court of the Emperors: Unknown Masterpieces from Han
Tradition to Tang Elegance (25–907), Florence, 2008, p. 207, no. 89, with description on p. 296.
A bowl of this form decorated in the same style and technique with twin birds and floral scroll in the central roundel, from
the Brundage Collection, now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, is illustrated in the catalogue Mostra d’Arte Cinese
(Exhibition of Chinese Art), Venice, 1954, p. 85, no. 276 and the same bowl is illustrated again by Trubner, The Arts of the T’ang
Dynasty, Los Angeles, 1957, pp. 116–117, no. 331; by Singer, Early Chinese Gold & Silver, China Institute, New York, 1971, p. 53,
no. 82; and by Kelley, Chinese Gold & Silver in American Collections: Tang Dynasty A.D. 618–907, Dayton, 1984, p. 53, no. 9.
Another similarly decorated Tang silver bowl of this form is illustrated in the auction catalogue, Die Sammlung des Herrn Dr.
Otto Burchard, Berlin, Cassirer and Helbing, Berlin, 22nd May, 1928, lot 206.

Compare also the similar parcel-gilt silver bowl without its footring in the collection of Carl Kempe, illustrated by Gyllensvärd
and Scott in Kinesiskt Guld och Silver I Carl Kempe-Samlingen (Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection),
Ulricehamn, 1999, p. 164, no. 120.

晚唐/五代 鎏金花鳥紋五曲銀碗 徑 13 厘米