Lot 588. An incised 'Ding' 'Two fish' dish, Northern Song dynasty (960-1127);  20.2 cm., 8  in. Estimate 500,000 — 700,000 HKD  (60,003 - 84,005 EUR). Lot sold 625,000 HKD (73,101 EUR). Photo Sotheby's 2015.

finely potted with deep rounded sides rising from a low footring, swiftly incised on the recessed interior floor with two carps leaping above combed waves, applied overall with a pale ivory-tinged glaze occasionally pooling in darker tear-drops down the exterior, the rim encircled with metal, silk pouch and Japanese box.

Property from a private East Asian collection

Provenance: Kochukyo Co., Ltd., Tokyo. 

Note: This bowl is remarkable for its lively incised motif of two fish among waves. Bowls of this form and decoration are held in important museums and private collections worldwide; see one in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the Museum’s exhibition Decorated Porcelains of Dingzhou, Taipei, 2014, cat. no. II-25; another in the Benaki Museum, Athens, published in Leigh Ashton and R.L. Hobson, Catalogue of the Benaki Museum, Athens, 1939, pl. 258; and a third, from the collection of Wayland Wells Williams and now in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, published in George J. Lee,Selected Far Eastern Art in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 1970, pl. 292. See also a bowl from the George Eumorfopoulos collection, illustrated in R.L. Hobson, The Eumorfopoulos Collection, vol. 3, London, 1926, pl. XXVI, no. C130; and two further bowls sold in our London rooms, the first from the collection of V.W. Shriro, 28th May 1963, lot 62, and the second from the collection of Mrs Blanco White, 29th October 1957, lot 131.

Highly reproductive and often found swimming in pairs, fish symbolise marriage, many children and abundance, as well as being an emblem of harmony and conjugal bliss. Thus the motif on this bowl refers to the wish for a couple to be as harmonious as fish in water (yushui hexie). 

Sotheby's. Chinese Art. Hong Kong, 01 Jun 2015, 03:15 PM