A RARE DINGYAO PERSIMMON-GLAZED CUPSTAND SONG DYNASTY

skilfully fashioned after the lacquer prototype with a small cup-shaped receptacle with an incurved rim resting on a circular 'dish' and hollow gently splayed foot, covered overall save for the footring with a copper-russet glaze thinning to the edges of the 'cup' and 'dish', the unglazed footring revealing the white body

Galaxie Company, Hong Kong, 1990.

It is rare to find Dingyao cupstands of this persimmon glaze. Cupstands of this type were used as utensils for preparing and drinking tea as early as the Tang dynasty. It served the practical purpose of an elaborate saucer that held a teabowl while drinking hot tea. This particular form is said to have originated from lacquer and metal cupstands of the Northern Song period. See a lacquer stand excavated from a Song tomb at Heqiao, Yixing county, Jiangsu province, now in the Nanjing Museum, published in Chinese Lacquer from the Jean-Pierre Collection and Others, Eskenazi, London, 1992, p. 10, fig. 3.

For examples of persimmon-glazed Dingyao cupstands of similar form see one with a cup, found in Korea, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, illustrated in Rose Kerr, Song Dynasty Ceramics, London, 2004, pl. 40; another included in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Porcelain of the Song Dynasty (I), Hong Kong, 1996, pl. 86; and a third example in the Saint Louis Art Museum, included in the exhibition Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers, Harvard University of Art Museums, Cambridge, Mass., 1995, cat. no. 13. Compare also a cupstand, from the Arthur M. Sackler and Ruth Dreyfus Collections, sold at Christie's New York, 1st December 1994, lot 155; and another sold in these rooms, 2nd May 2000, lot 598.