JIN DYNASTY (1115-1234)

Ceramic pillows made in the shape of a child were popular during Song and Jin dynasty. Compare the Cizhou pottery pillow in the form of a reclining girl, decorated with a poem inscribed in cursive style on the top, in the collection of the Shanghai Museum, illustrated by d'Argencé (ed.) in Treasures from the Shanghai Museum: 6,000 Years of Chinese Art, Shanghai and San Francisco, 1983, p. 102, no. 88, and on p.163, where it is dated to Jin dynasty and described as from the Pacun kilns in present day Yu county, Henan province.

Another Cizhou pottery pillow of a girl, similarly decorated with a chrysanthemum branch on the top, is in the collection of Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and illustrated by He Li in Chinese Ceramics: The New Standard Guide, London, 1996, p. 168-9 and p. 198, no. 322. See, also, a smaller Cizhou pottery pillow of this type in the collection of the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, illustrated in Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1987, p. 327, no. 550.