NORTHERN SONG-JIN DYNASTY (AD 960-1234)

The iconography of a rhinoceros gazing at the moon is discussed at length by Jan Wirgin in Sung Ceramic Designs, Stockholm, 1970, pp.196-198. This motif goes back to an old legend that the peculiar structure within the rhinoceros’ horn is formed when it looks at the moon. The rhinoceros was perceived as a mythical beast in ancient China and it was believed that the rhinoceros was capable of communicating with the sky through its crescent-shaped horn.

A Yaozhou bowl in the Palace Museum, Beijing, carved with a similar scene of a rhinoceros gazing at the moon, is illustrated in Gugong Bowuyuan Cang Wenwu Zhenpin Quanji, Liang Song Ciqi, I (The Complete Collection of the Treasures of the Palace Museum: Porcelain of the Song Dynasty, I), Hong Kong, 1996, vol. 32, p. 147, no. 133. Another Yaozhou bowl carved with this design and of nearly identical size was sold at Christie’s New York, 2 December 1986, lot 114. This bowl was later exhibited and illustrated by J. J. Lally in The Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Marvin L. Gordon: Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, 2009, no. 6.