Lot Essay
A silver tray of this shape included in a hoard of silver vessels, ca. 1100, excavated near Bairin Youqi, Inner Mongolia, is illustrated in Wenwu 1980, no. 5, p. 58 (3 top), as well as in a line drawing on p. 48, where another line drawing of a silver cup shows what appears to be a band of linear scrolls in fine punched dots. A shallow silver cup with scroll decoration on the handle also executed in chased dotted line is illustrated by Bo Gyllensvard, Chinese Gold & Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1953, no. 136. This lobed, oblong shape continued into the Yuan Dynasty, such as the gold and silver plates of this shape discovered in a Yuan Dynasty burial hoard in Hefei, Anhui province in 1955. Many of the objects from this important hoard are decorated with finely engraved floral patterns and phoenixes. See Wenwu cankao ziliao 1957, no. 2, pp. 51-58