A RARE PETAL-CHASED SILVER STEM CUP

Details
A RARE PETAL-CHASED SILVER STEM CUP
TANG DYNASTY

The bowl chased in rounded relief with two rows of ten petals, each petal finely engraved with various birds and plants, with further plants separating the petal tips below the everted rim, raised on a knopped and spreading stem foot divided into foliate-decorated, chrysanthemum-like petals creating a scalloped edge at the rim, all reserved on a fine ring-punched ground, old repairs to mouth and foot rims--2 11/16in. (6.8cm.) diam.
Provenance
David Weill Collection, 37/85

Lot Essay

A very similar cup is illustrated by Bo Gyllensvard, Chinese Gold & Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1953, no. 111. Compare, also, the cup of this shape with similar decoration, but with a border of raised dots between the two registers of petals, in the Hakutsuru Art Museum, Kobe, Japan, also illustrated by Gyllensvard, "T'ang Gold and Silver", B.M.F.E.A., No. 29, 1957, pl. 4(b); another illustrated in Tangdai Jinyinqi (Gold and Silver of the Tang Dynasty), Zhejiang Municipal Museum and Shaanxi Provincial Museum, 1985, figs. 7 and 8; and the cup of this form included in the exhibition, Masterpieces of Chinese Art from the Art Institute of Chicago, Osaka, Japan, Museum of Oriental Ceramics, 1989, Catalogue no. 25