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Lot Essay
This design of a duck in waves was both visually very successful and very popular. The Yaozhou style of carving, in which the incisions were made using a knife held at an oblique angle, gave a dichromatic effect in combination with the deep olive transparent glaze. A slightly smaller bowl with the same decoration as the Falk bowl was excavated in 1983 at Luoyang and is now in the Luoyang Museum. This example is illustrated in Urban Life in the Song, Yuan & Ming, Empress Place Museum, Singapore, 1994, p. 82-3, where it is dated to the Song dynasty. Another, also smaller, example is in the Palace Museum, Beijing and is illustrated in Zhongguo wenwu jinghua daquan - Taoci juan, Taipei, 1993, p. 300, no. 435, where it is dated to the Northern Song. A fragment of a more thickly potted bowl with similar wave designs to those of the Falk bowl excavated from the Jin stratum at the Tongchuan kilns site at Huangbaozhen, Yaozhou, in 1987, is illustrated in The Masterpieces of Yaozhou Ware, Osaka, 1997, p. 118, no. 169, while the same publication illustrates as no. 41 a bowl with similar waves but without ducks, which is dated to the Northern Song period. A similar bowl excavated from the tomb site of the Xixia ruling house near Yinchuan, Ningxia, is illustrated in Wenwu, 1988: 9, p. 63, pl. 10, fig. 7.
Yaozhou dishes of similar form to the Falk example with the duck and wave design are found in a number of major museum collections outside China. Examples of approximately the same size as the Falk bowl are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, illustrated by J. Ayers in Far Eastern Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1980, no. 97; the British Museum, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 5, Tokyo, 1981, no. 77; and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, illustrated by M. Tregear in Song Ceramics, New York, 1982, p. 105, pl. 123. A slightly larger version of this bowl is illustrated by R. Krahl in Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. I, London, 1994, no. 416.
Yaozhou dishes of similar form to the Falk example with the duck and wave design are found in a number of major museum collections outside China. Examples of approximately the same size as the Falk bowl are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, illustrated by J. Ayers in Far Eastern Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1980, no. 97; the British Museum, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 5, Tokyo, 1981, no. 77; and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, illustrated by M. Tregear in Song Ceramics, New York, 1982, p. 105, pl. 123. A slightly larger version of this bowl is illustrated by R. Krahl in Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. I, London, 1994, no. 416.