SONG-JIN DYNASTY, 12TH-13TH CENTURY

The poetic couplet on the present pillow relays a meaningful message suggesting that there is an order of nature which is beyond the control of man. The use of calligraphy painted in white slip on a dark ground as the main decoration for a Cizhou pillow is very rare. A known group of Cizhou pillows made by the Zhang Family in Henan province is decorated with inscriptions in brown over a white slip, such as an example from the Falk Collection, illustrated by Y. Mino, Freedom of Clay and Brush through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz'u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis, 1981, p. 143, pl. 59, and later sold at Christie’s New York, 16 October 2001, lot 69.