A VERY RARE LARGE FLORAL-LOBED BLACK LACQUER 'CAMELLIA' DISH

Details
A VERY RARE LARGE FLORAL-LOBED BLACK LACQUER 'CAMELLIA' DISH
YUAN DYNASTY, 14TH CENTURY

The interior deeply carved through the thick black lacquer to the buff ground with leafy camellia branches with four large flowerheads and numerous smaller buds, the veining of the flowers and leaves finely incised, the exterior deeply carved with a classic-scroll band, standing on a conforming floral foot, the base lacquered brown
12 1/2 in. (31.7 cm.) diam., Japanese wood box
Exhibited
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1990/91
The Shoto Museum of Art, Shibuya, Japan, 1991, Chinese Lacquerware, Catalogue, no. 83

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Carrie Li
Carrie Li

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Lot Essay

Examples of carved black tihei lacquer dating to the Song and Yuan dynasties are far less common that their cinnabar lacquer counterparts and the few extant examples are mainly found in Japanese or Western public collections as noted in the catalogue entry to a Song/Yuan black lacquer birds dish included in the Bukchon Art Museum 2008 exhibition, East Asian Lacquer, p. 38, Catalogue no. I-8.

It is especially rare to find a tray decorated with flowers as the primary design as most examples of this date include pairs of birds on a floral ground such as lot 1817 in the present sale. The design is extremely successful in this instance and the craftsman has made wonderful use of the deep layers of lustrous black lacquer to depict the different planes of overlapping and furled leaves.

Compare the floral design on the present example to that found on a Yuan lobed black lacquer square dish illustrated by Lee Yu-kuan, Oriental Lacquer Art, Tokyo and New York, 1972, p. 136, no. 69.

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