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Lot Essay
The present tray is exceptional for the superb quality of carving and its unusual form.
This rectangular tray is extremely rare and only one other closely comparable example appears to have been published. A tray of almost identical size and design but with the addition of a Yang Mao zao mark incised on the inner side of the foot was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 30 May 2005, lot 1335.
Another closely related Zhang Cheng-marked rectangular tray with similar birds and flowers, from the Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya, was illustrated in Karamono, Imported Lacquerwork - Chinese, Korean and Ryukyuan (Okinawa), Japan, 1997, no. 19. The composition on the Tokugawa example is read horizontally, while the present lot is oriented in a vertical direction.
The subject of two birds in flight amidst flower and foliage was very popular during the Song and Yuan dynasty, and can be found most often in a circular composition as on a dish or round box, where the bodies of the birds and their long flowing tail feathers form a circular motion. See, for example, the dish from the Tokugawa Art Museum, included in the same exhibition, and illustrated in the Catalogue, ibid., no. 21.
This rectangular tray is extremely rare and only one other closely comparable example appears to have been published. A tray of almost identical size and design but with the addition of a Yang Mao zao mark incised on the inner side of the foot was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 30 May 2005, lot 1335.
Another closely related Zhang Cheng-marked rectangular tray with similar birds and flowers, from the Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya, was illustrated in Karamono, Imported Lacquerwork - Chinese, Korean and Ryukyuan (Okinawa), Japan, 1997, no. 19. The composition on the Tokugawa example is read horizontally, while the present lot is oriented in a vertical direction.
The subject of two birds in flight amidst flower and foliage was very popular during the Song and Yuan dynasty, and can be found most often in a circular composition as on a dish or round box, where the bodies of the birds and their long flowing tail feathers form a circular motion. See, for example, the dish from the Tokugawa Art Museum, included in the same exhibition, and illustrated in the Catalogue, ibid., no. 21.