FIVE DYNASTIES-NORTHERN SONG DYNASTY, 10TH CENTURY

The arrangement of the decorative motif on the cover, dividing the surface in half and placing the butterflies either side of a central axis, is closely related to the metalwork of the middle to late Tang period. Yue ware of the Five Dynasties and Northern Song periods adopted this style of decoration, and the present box and cover exhibits the way in which the potters used painterly concepts and fine incised lineation to imitate the detailed metalwork of the earlier period.

See a Yue box and cover, dated to the late Tang dynasty or 10^th century, incised with a design of cash, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue Chinese Ceramics, From the Prehistoric Period through Ch’ien Lung, Los Angeles County Museum, 1952, p. 98, no. 259, while a Northern Song Yue box and cover, incised with a pair of parrots, is illustrated in Special Exhibition of Early Chinese Greenware – Principally Yueh Ware, National Museum of History, Taipei, 1996, pp. 362-3, pl. 113. Another green-glazed box and cover dated to the Five Dynasties/Song dynasty, incised with Tang-style floral sprays, is included in the exhibition catalogue, Tokubetsu Tenji Higashi Ajia no Futamono (Special Exhibition of Covered Boxes from East Asia), Izumishi Kuboso Memorial Museum, 1984, p. 27, no. 33.