NORTHERN SONG DYNASTY, 11TH-12TH CENTURY

This superb bowl is a classic example of Song dynasty Ding ware at its finest. This is the type of Ding bowl that was so greatly admired by the Chinese court. It is significant that a very similar bowl with peony decoration fluently incised over its six-lobed form is in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan and is published in their Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Ting Ware White Porcelain, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1987, no. 38. A six-lobed bowl with the same incised decoration depicting lotus, as that seen on the Falk bowl, is in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, and illustrated in their publication, The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Porcelain of the Song Dynasty (I), Hong Kong, 1996, p. 60, no. 52, where it is specifically noted that this bowl was part of the Qing Court collection. The bowls from both the Palace Museum, Beijing and the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, have their rims bound with metal, as the rim of the Falk bowl would originally have been.