Page 17 - 2019 October Important Chinese Ceramics Sotheby's Hong Kong

pillow of this form incised with confronting ducks was included in the exhibition Chinese Ceramic Pillows from Yeung Wing Tak
Collection, Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 1984, cat. no. 16; and one with confronted deer, in the Victoria and Albert
A Museum, London, is illustrated in Rose Kerr, Song Dynasty Ceramics, London, 2004, pl. 61. See also two pillows decorated with
a single bird included in the exhibition Charm of Black and White Ware. Transition of Cizhou Type Wares, Osaka Municipal Museum, Osaka,
2002, cat. nos 19 and 21, the first in the Sano Art Museum, Shizuoka; another in the British Museum, London, included in the exhibition
Freedom of Clay and Brush Through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz’u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis Museum of Art,
Indianapolis, 1980, cat. no. 16, where it is compared with another pillow in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, fig. 34; and the fragment
of a pillow excavated at the Xiguan kilns, Mixian, Henan province, fig. 35.
Both the motif of confronting birds and the carefully stamped ‘fish-roe’ ground on this pillow, were inspired by designs on metalware.
Compare for example a silver casket with two confronting birds, attributed to the Liao dynasty (907-1125), in the Shaanxi History
Museum, Xi’an, illustrated in National Treasures. Collection of Rare Cultural Relics of Shaanxi Province, Xi’an, 1998, p. 144.

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