The bowl is of open form with gently curved sides everted slightly at the rim. The interior is decorated with two concentric registers of radiating narrow overlapping petals, suggesting a chrysanthemum flower, with sixty in the outer register and twenty-two in the inner register. The exterior is carved with petal-like grooves. A light olive-green glaze covers the bowl inside and out
and on the base,
pooling to a deeper tone in the recesses of the carving. The rim, the reverse and the base with some light brown and dry areas. The knife-pared footrim is unglazed, showing the fine-grained light-grey ware.
Provenance
:
Collection of Professor Brian M. Salzberg, no. 1102
For a comparable bowl, sold by this gallery, see Priestley & Ferraro, ‘Song Ceramics’, November 2008.
A line drawing of a shard of this pattern of bowl, excavated at the Yaozhou kiln site, is illustrated in
宋代耀州窑址 “
The Yaozhou Kiln Site of the Song Period”, fig.62, no. 7, p. 111, where it is dated to the middle period of the Northern Song dynasty. A complete example of a bowl of this type is in the Palace Museum, illustrated in
中国耀州窑 “
Yaozhou kiln of China”, no. 82, p. 110; another is illustrated in the same volume, p. 324, fig. 11; and a third, from the Eugene
Bernat
collection is illustrated by
Wirgin
,
Sung Ceramic Designs
, pl. 7, h, discussed p. 43.