Lot 71. A finely carved 'Dengfeng' pillow, Northern Song dynasty (960-1279). Width 7 3/4  in., 19.7 cm. Estimate 80,000 — 100,000 USD. Lot sold  430,000 USD. Photo Sotheby's.

of rectangular section tapering towards the base, the concave top and sides  exquisitely carved through the creamy-white slip to the dark body with long stems bearing large peony blooms among leafy foliage, covered overall in a transparent glaze save for the underside covered in a white slip.

Exhibited: Zhongguo taoci jingpin zhan [The Exhibition of Chinese Ceramics of Eight Dynasties], National Museum of History, Taipei, 1987, p. 33.

Note: This pillow is notable for its bold and vigorous floral scroll which has been endowed with an added sense of three-dimensionality through its carving and delicately incised lines. Pillows decorated with the sgraffito technique, which involved the application of a layer of white slip subsequently carved to reveal the brownish body of the piece, were produced at the Dengfeng kilns in Henan province, Northern China, during the early Northern Song dynasty (960-1127). Fragments of similarly decorated vessels were unearthed in the Dengfeng area; for example see a reconstructed ewer illustrated in Series of China's Ancient Porcelain Kiln Sites. Dengfeng Kiln of China, Beijing, 2011, pl. 57.

A similar ingot-shaped pillow, in the Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, is published in The Complete Works of Chinese Ceramics. Song Dynasty (I), vol. 7, Shanghai,  1999, pl. 196; another in the Musée Guimet, Paris, is illustrated in Ceramic Art of the World. Song Dynasty, vol. 12; Tokyo 1977, pl. 112; and a third published in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. 3, pt. II, London, 2006, no. 1532. See also two cloud-shaped pillows of this type, the first from the Lucy Maud Buckingham collection, and now held in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, and the second in the Yamato Bunkakan Museum, Nara, published in Jan Wirgin, Sung Ceramic Designs, Stockholm, 1970, pl. 41, nos. g and j.  

 Sotheby's. Song Tradition: Early Ceramics from the Yang De Tang Collection. New York, 17 march 2015, 11:00 AM