.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The present tray is exceptional for the superb quality of carving and its unusual form. 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 rectangular tray with similar birds and flowers, from the Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya, is illustrated in Karamono, Imported Lacquerwork - Chinese, Korean and Ryukyuan (Okinawa), Japan, 1997, no. 19. The composition on the Tokugawa example is read horizontally, while that on the current tray is vertically oriented.
The subject of two birds in flight amidst flowers and foliage was very popular during the Song and Yuan dynasties, and can be found most often in a circular compositions 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.
Another closely related rectangular tray with similar birds and flowers, from the Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya, is illustrated in Karamono, Imported Lacquerwork - Chinese, Korean and Ryukyuan (Okinawa), Japan, 1997, no. 19. The composition on the Tokugawa example is read horizontally, while that on the current tray is vertically oriented.
The subject of two birds in flight amidst flowers and foliage was very popular during the Song and Yuan dynasties, and can be found most often in a circular compositions 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.