A RARE YUEYAO LOBED CUP STAND

EARLY NORTHERN SONG DYNASTY, 10TH CENTURY

Details

A RARE YUEYAO LOBED CUP STAND
EARLY NORTHERN SONG DYNASTY, 10TH CENTURY
The upper section carved around the sides with a band of inverted petals below a circular lip enclosing a platform incised with a floret within a wave border, the whole rising from a shallow dish with everted rim carved and incised with waves within a raised outer edge formed into six lobes that correspond to the six trefoil-pierced lobes of the slightly flared foot, covered overall with a glaze of greenish-olive tone
5 in. (12.7 cm.) diam., box

Provenance

Sotheby's, New York, 4 June 1985, lot 150.

Exhibited

New Orleans Museum of Art, Heaven and Earth Seen Within, 2000, no. 2.

Lot Essay

The increase in the popularity of tea drinking during the Tang dynasty lead to the development of new utensils, such as cup stands. The cup stands produced at the Yue kilns were highly prized in Korea where they served as the inspiration for the well-known celadon cup stands of the Koryo dynasty.
A similar Yueyao cup stand in the Ashmolean Museum is illustrated by M. Tregear, Catalogue of Greenware in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1976, no. 142. Another example, lacking the piercing at the foot, was excavated in 1979 and is illustrated in Chugoku toji zenshu, vol. 4, Yueyao, Kyoto, 1981, no. 195.

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