AN IMPERIALLY INSCRIBED DINGYAO DISH NORTHERN SONG / JIN DYNASTY, INSCRIPTION DATED TO THE BINGSHEN YEAR (1776)

finely potted with six lobes rising from a flat base, applied in a transparent ivory-coloured glaze revealing its white stoneware body and pooling to a darker tone above the base on the exterior, the base incised at the centre with a poetical inscription neatly structured in a hexagonal form, followed by a yuti mark and dated to the spring of the bingshen year, corresponding to 1776, terminating with two seal marks reading guxiang ('fragrance of antiquity') and taipu ('great gem'), the rim bound in copper

Christie's London, 12th October 1970, lot 27.
Purchased from P. Delplace, November 1972.
A Belgian private collection.
Sotheby's London, 9th November 2005, lot 268.

Overall good condition. As visible in the catalogue photographs, there is a 0.4cm flake on the underside at the rim, in the 7 o clock position. Other minor flakes at the rim, and characteristic firing imperfections.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The Qianlong Emperor is well known both for his substantial art collection, which included an unsurpassed assembly of classic Song ceramics, and for his vast legacy of poems. His connoisseurship and interest in ceramics is documented in many poems he composed on 'Ru', 'guan', 'ge', 'Ding', 'Jun' and other wares. Feng Xianming, Annotated Collection of Historical Documents on Ancient Chinese Ceramics, Taipei, 2000, pp. 271ff. records more than 150 Qianlong poems about Song ceramics, many of which were inscribed on Song vessels. Most of these pieces formerly in the Qianlong Imperial collection are today preserved in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, many of which were included in the recent 2012 exhibition Obtaining Refined Enjoyment, The Qianlong Emperor's Taste in Ceramics. Very few examples of this type have ever appeared at auction.

In Consummate Images: Emperor Qianlong's Vision of the Ideal Kiln, Orientations, vol. 42, no. 8, November-December 2011, pp. 80-88, Yu Peichin, Curator at the Department of Antiquities in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, relates how it is recorded in Chujishi xiaoxu or 'Preface of the First Poetry Collection' in Leishantang quanji that the Qianlong Emperor proclaimed "I have no other interests besides writing poems and articles in my leisure time... I write to praise everything". 

The imperial poem on the present can be translated as follows:

          only the radiance of the sun Dingzhou cannot stand up to,
          And the wares of the Xing kilns have become treasured relics;
          So long a time has passed and now they are rarely seen,
          I search for them at every market, but most pots there are badly made.

The poem is followed by the phrase Qianlong bingshen chun yu ti 'Imperial inscription in the spring of the year bingshen of the Qianlong period [equivalent to AD 1776]' and the two seals gu xiang ('fragrance of antiquity') and tai pu ('great gem'). The poem is recorded with a slight variant in Qianlong yuzhi shiji (Collected Works of the Qianlong Emperor), section V, juan 23/27a, where the reference to Xing ware, Xingyao tao, is replaced by a reference to 'secret official ware', guanyao bi. The poem itself is not dated, but arranged in sequence between two other poems dated to May 1786. A similar dating discrepancy occurs also on the 'Ding' bowl in the Percival David Foundation included in Stacey Pierson and Amy Barnes, A Collector's Vision: Ceramics for the Qianlong Emperor, London, 2001, pl. 25, and discussed in Margaret Medley, Illustrated Catalogue of Ting and Allied Wares, London, 1980, pl. VI, no. 44, where the inscription refers to the year 1777 while the poem is recorded for the year 1782. In that version, with different date and seals, and written in regular vertical lines rather than in the form of a hexagon, the poem appears again on a 'Ru' ware washer in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, included in the Illustrated Catalogue of Sung Dynasty Porcelain in the National Palace Museum: Ju Ware, Kuang Ware, Chün Ware, Taipei, 1973, pl. 17; Grand View: Special Exhibition of Ju Ware from the Northern Sung Dynasty, Taipei, 2006, p. 50, no. 6. 

For examples of Qianlong poems inscribed on carved Dingyao dishes, see Obtaining Refined Enjoyment, The Qianlong Emperor's Taste in Ceramics, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2012, pls. 5 and 6. Compare also a Dingyao dish in the Palace Museum, Beijing, inscribed with another Qianlong poem dated to the jiawu year (equivalent to AD 1774), illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Porcelain of the Song Dynasty (I), Hong Kong, 1996, pl. 70.

The Dingzhou kilns have been identified at Quyang in Ding county, Hebei province. Characteristic pieces are thinly potted, with a fine white body which does not require a slip to appear white after firing, and an ivory-coloured glaze which tends to run down in somewhat darker 'tears'. The present dish is a fine example of the best quality undecorated 'Ding' ware of the Northern Song period, and its smooth finely glazed base made it ideally suited for an inscription.

The well-known record in a Song text that the court did not appreciate Ding wares because of their unglazed rims and ordered wares from the Ru kilns instead, has been discussed by Ts’ai Mei-fen of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, at a symposium organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1996. She argued that unglazed rims were not the consequence of the kilns’ practice of firing bowls upside down, but that “the reason for the unglazed rim was that the metal-banded rim was the popular taste of the time”, approved even at court, and that “the practice of covering edges … began well before the Ting [Ding] kiln started firing its ware upside down. The practice was not introduced to cover up the unglazed rim, but, on the contrary, the unglazed rim was possibly instituted because of the popular practices of decorating edges.” She states that the Wensiyuan (Crafts Institute), a workshop for the production of jewellery under the Directorate for Imperial Manufactories, as well as the Houyuan Zaozuosuo (Palace Workshop of the Rear Garden), another workshop that produced articles for use in the inner court, both included a Lengzuo workshop, for the ‘decoration of edges’. Ts’ai suggests therefore that the quote does not refer to imperial taste but to the fact that metal-bound vessels were not considered suitable for certain imperial ritual ceremonies. See Ts’ai Mei-fen, ‘A Discussion of Ting Ware with Unglazed Rims and Related Twelfth-Century Official Porcelain’, Arts of the Sung and Yüan, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996, pp. 109-31. The skilfully applied copper band on the current inscribed Dingyao dish is representative of the popular taste of the time. 

The careful layout of the imperial inscription and its seals in the form of a hexagon can similarly be seen on other Song pieces, for example, on a 'Ru' dish and two 'guan' foliate dishes in the Percival David Foundation, London, illustrated in Pierson and Barnes, op.cit., pls. 3, 8 and 9. Compare a similarly shaped, slightly larger dish without inscription illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol.1, London, 1994, pl. 347; and another included in Michael Sullivan, Chinese Ceramics, Bronzes and Jades in the Collection of Sir Alan and Lady Barlow, London, 1963, pl. 42b. See also another larger dish from the Edward T. Chow collection sold in our London rooms, 16th December 1980, lot 253; and two others, one from the Lindberg collection and one from the Alfred Clark collection, also sold in our London rooms, 12th December 1978, lot 118, and 25th March 1975, lot 40, respectively.