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Lot Essay
The hallmark Shigancao Tang may be translated as 'Thatched Cottage by the Brook'. Shigan is one of the songs in Shijing Xiaoya (Book of Songs, Lesser Odes Chapter), with the first two lines reading: 'The brook flows; the southern mountains deep.
The song is about building houses and the joys of home, and by reference to this song, the owner of the large dish was celebrating the comforts of his dwelling place.
The choice of decoration further expresses the theme of happiness and good living, as the combined imagery of peaches and bats is highly auspicious, with peaches being traditionally symbolic of immortality and the bats, homophonous for wealth and luck.
The rare mark Shigancao tang can also be found on a copper-red-glazed moonflask from the Qianlong period in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrated in Rare Marks on Chinese Ceramics, London, 1998, p. 116, no. 48.
The song is about building houses and the joys of home, and by reference to this song, the owner of the large dish was celebrating the comforts of his dwelling place.
The choice of decoration further expresses the theme of happiness and good living, as the combined imagery of peaches and bats is highly auspicious, with peaches being traditionally symbolic of immortality and the bats, homophonous for wealth and luck.
The rare mark Shigancao tang can also be found on a copper-red-glazed moonflask from the Qianlong period in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrated in Rare Marks on Chinese Ceramics, London, 1998, p. 116, no. 48.