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Lot Essay
The very difficult technique used to produce the design on this vase was developed at the Cizhou kilns in the Northern Song dynasty. It involved the application of a pale slip to the unfired stoneware vessel, followed by a dark slip. The outline of the decoration was then incised through the dark top layer and the background area of the design was cut away to reveal the pale slip beneath. Details, such as stamens and leaf veins, were also incised through the dark upper layer either with a fine point or a comb-like instrument. The thin colorless glaze could then be applied and the vessel fired.
A Cizhou meiping with similar carved decoration in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is illustrated by S. G. Valenstein in A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989, p. 93, pl. 88. Another, formerly in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Sedgwick, and now in the British Museum, was included in the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, London, 1936, p. 121, no. 1248. A further similar example in the National Museum of Korea, Seoul, is illustrated by Gakuji Hasebe in Sekai toji zenshu, Tokyo, 1977, vol. 12, Song dynasty, p. 278, no. 288.
A Cizhou meiping with similar carved decoration in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is illustrated by S. G. Valenstein in A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989, p. 93, pl. 88. Another, formerly in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Sedgwick, and now in the British Museum, was included in the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, London, 1936, p. 121, no. 1248. A further similar example in the National Museum of Korea, Seoul, is illustrated by Gakuji Hasebe in Sekai toji zenshu, Tokyo, 1977, vol. 12, Song dynasty, p. 278, no. 288.