Lot 106
  • 106

A FINE AND RARE GOLD DISH SONG DYNASTY

Estimate
30,000 - 40,000 GBP
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Description

of circular shape and with shallow, gently rounded sides, the centre finely chased and engraved with a roundel formed by two large peonies blooms set amidst large feathery leaves and curling tendrils, the everted rim finely incised with a coin pattern

Exhibited

Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1954-55, cat. no. 52.

Literature

Bo Gyllensvärd, Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1953, pl. 52.

R. Soame Jenyns & William Watson, Chinese Art, The Minor Arts, London, 1963, pl. 15.

Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, The Museum of Art and Far Eastern Antiquities in Ulricehamn, Ulricehamn, 1999, pl. 49.

Catalogue Note

The present dish is a rare example of vessels made in pure gold during the Song dynasty. Although gold and silver utensils and vessels were made in large quantities during the Tang dynasty, very few Song pieces have been preserved to the present. A rare Song gold dish of this form, decorated in the centre with a large blooming lotus motif, formerly in the collections of Christian Holmes and the Hon. Hugh Scott, and now in the collection of Pierre Uldry, is illustrated in Chinesisches Gold und Silber, Zurich, 1994, pl. 272.

Compare also a Song silver dish of similar size and form, the decorative pattern in the centre consisting of a stylized blooming peony flower while the rim chased with a coin pattern, same as that seen on the present dish, from the collection of the Hon. Hugh Scott, included in the China Institute in America exhibition Early Chinese Gold and Silver, China House Gallery, New York, 1971, cat. no. 92.