Page 38 - Chinese Art From Two American Collections, April 5, 2017 Hong Kong

fig. 1
Guan dish with hibiscus-shaped rim in celadon glaze
Southern Song – Yuan dynasty
© National Palace Museum, Taipei
圖一
南宋至元 官窰青瓷葵口碟
© 台北國立故宮博物院藏品
Huangdi de taoci pinwei/Obtaining Refined Enjoyment: The
Qianlong Emperor’s Taste in Ceramics, National Palace
Museum, Taipei, 2012; and Gui si chenxing. Qing gong chuanshi
12 zhi 14 shiji qingci tezhan/Precious as the Morning Star.
12th-14th Century Celadons in the Qing Court Collection,
National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2016). Here, Yu accepts
the same five pieces as Song (Yu 2012, cat. nos 23-24, and
Yu 2016, cat. nos II-23 – II-26). She further publishes six
dishes, chosen by the Qianlong Emperor to be inscribed with
his poems, as “Southern Song-Yuan Dynasty (12th -14th
Century)” (Yu 2012, cat. nos 38-43, figs 1 and 2), four of them
not included in Ts’ai’s catalogue, and nine other dishes as
“Yuan dynasty, 14th century” (Yu 2016, pp. 284-289), one of
them also dated like that by Ts’ai, six not published by her.
These thirty guan dishes in the National Palace Museum
impressively document the wide scope of these wares. With
its classic Southern Song mallow form, dark brown body
and greenish-grey glaze with a distinct dark grey crackle,
the present dish neatly fits into this group of dishes in the
National Palace Museum, Taipei, as well as into a smaller
group of six dishes in the Palace Museum, Beijing, attributed
to the Song dynasty, but classified as ge ware (The Complete
Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Porcelain of
the Song Dynasty, Beijing, 1996, vol. 2, pls 74, 78, 82, 84, 85,
91). Ts’ai sums up the main problem herself, when she writes
“The works of the late Southern Sung and Yüan dynasty are
especially difficult to distinguish, since the fluctuations which
occurred at the kilns over the 150 or so years of the Southern
Sung in accord with the changing times are impossible to know
with any certainty” (Ts’ai 1989, p. 36).
Particularly noticeable is the fact that dishes in both collections Junkunc III, which included outstanding pieces of Song Ru as
share a distinct feature of the crackle pattern with the present
dish, namely a more wide-meshed medallion in the centre,
36 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比
corresponding to the area of the base underneath. On the
present dish, the base is distinctly recessed, the body there
being reduced to a thinner layer than elsewhere. Without
handling, this peculiarity of the potting can of course not
be verified on the companion dishes from the Qing court
collection, but it is likely that on all pieces this feature of the
crackle pattern similarly results from a difference in body
thickness (compare Ts’ai 1989, cat. no. 127; Yu 2012, pls 40
and 42; Yu 2016, p. 287 right; The Complete Collection, op.cit.,
pls 78, 82 and 85).
Dishes of similar shape have also been discovered at the site
of the Zhanggongxiang kilns of Ruzhou in Henan province,
which are either interpreted as the Northern Song guan
kilns and as such would be predecessors of their Southern
Song counterparts, or as kilns producing for the Jin court
(1115-1234), i.e. their contemporaries. Three reconstructed
examples were included in the exhibition Henan xinchu Song
Jin mingyao ciqi tezhan [Special exhibition of porcelains
recently excavated from famous Song and Jin kilns in Henan],
Poly Art Museum, Beijing, 2009, catalogue pp. 87 and 100-102,
all attributed to the late Northern Song to early Yuan period,
late 11th to 13th century.
Nothing similar seems to have been published so far from the
main Southern Song guan kiln site, Laohudong in Hangzhou
which, however, has not yet brought to light any of the finest
guan ware types; see Du Zhengxian, ed., Hangzhou Laohudong
yaozhi ciqi jingxuan [Selection of porcelains from the
Laohudong kiln sites in Hangzhou], Beijing, 2002.
The present dish comes from the fabled collection of Stephen
well as guan ware.