A 'Longquan' celadon funerary vase and cover Song dynasty

the ovoid body with a skirt of upright lotus lappets with finely incised details, applied to the shoulder with a small dog in pursuit of a bird and with a large sinuous dragon coiling around the wide tapering neck, the low domed cover surmounted by a small bird finial, covered overall in a cool blue-green glaze suffused with crackles, wood stand (3)

Parke-Bernet, 24th May 1944, lot 53.
Personal Collection of Warren E. Cox, New York (by label).

Chinese Ceramics in Chicago Collections, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 1982, cat.no. 19, p. 35.

This type of funerary urn represents one of a pair.  Its mate, decorated with a tiger and a dog, would have been placed on the west side of the deceased while this urn with its dragon would have been placed on the east side.