A carved 'Ding' 'Lotus and Duck' bowl, Northern Song dynasty. Estimate 200,000 — 300,000 USD. Photo Sotheby's.

the shallow rounded sides rising from a short foot, freely carved to the interior with two ducks swimming in a pond side by side with lotus flowers and weeds, covered overall with an ivory glaze pooling in characteristic teardrops down the exterior, the rim left unglazed - Diameter 8 1/4  in., 21 cm

Property from the Bai Ma Xuan Collection

Notes: Ding wares are ranked amongst the ‘Five Famous Wares of the Song Dynasty’, a term coined by collectors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Celebrated for their thin potting and fine white body, which does not require a slip to appear white after firing, and an ivory-colored glaze which tends to run down in somewhat darker ‘tears’, Ding wares became renowned for their elegant forms that often derived from contemporaneous silver and lacquer vessels to find favor with the court and wealthy monasteries during the Song and Jin periods.

See two related Ding bowls depicting two swimming ducks with copper bound rims, in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Ting Ware White Porcelain, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1987, nos. 44 and 46.  See another lobed Ding bowl of slightly larger size, with similar decoration, formerly in the Eumorfopoulos Collection illustrated in Margaret Medley, Illustrated Catalogue of Ting and Allied Wares, Percival David Foundation of Art, London, 1980, p. 17, no. 33.  

Compare a Ding bowl sold Christie's London, 12th July 2005, lot 74; and another in our London rooms, 7th November 2012, lot 219.

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Works of Art New York, 17 mars 2015, 02:00 PM