TANG DYNASTY (AD 618-907)

The twin duck motif present on the interior of this bowl represents a loving couple living in harmony, and a happy marriage.

Compare two Tang dynasty parcel-gilt bowls of this shape, but decorated with flower blossoms and leafy stems rather than ducks, illustrated by B. Gyllensvärd in Chinese Gold & Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1953, nos. 115 and 116, where the author notes that three bowls similar to no. 116 were found at Balin in Eastern Mongolia. Two other Tang silver bowls of this type in the collection of Pierre Uldry illustrated in Chinesisches Gold und Silber, Museum Rietberg, Zürich, 1994, nos. 147 and 148. One of the bowls in the Natanael Wessén Collection, Stockholm, was later included in the exhibition, Early Chinese art from tombs and temples, Eskenazi, London, June-July 1993, no. 32 and is now in the Miho Museum, Japan, illustrated in the Catalogue of the Miho Museum (The South Wing), 1997, no. 136. Unlike these other bowls which have two blossoming and budding leafy stems in the center and differing flower sprays on the lobes of the interior and exterior walls, the present bowl has four peony stems radiating outwards from the center, and the same flower spray repeated on the interior and exterior of each of the five lobes.