Lot 41. A 'Ding'-type black-glazed bowl, Song dynasty. Diameter 5 in., 12.7 cm. Estimate 60,000 — 80,000 USD. Lot sold 75,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

with deep rounded sides rising to an everted rim, covered overall with a rich brownish-black glaze thinning to a russet brown at the rim, stopping unevenly above the unglazed foot ring revealing the white body. 

Note: Black-glazed 'Ding' ware of this form is extremely rare though a large number of wide conical bowls are known. See the extensive discussion on black 'Ding' ware by Robert D. Mowry in Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1996, where a conical bowl is illustrated, pl. 18. See two other black 'Ding' bowls of conical form included in the exhibition Song Ceramics, The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 1999, cat. nos 37 and 38, one from the MOA Museum of Art, Atami, and the other in a private collection. 

Compare the fragments of two black 'Ding' bowls of closely related form to the present bowl, discovered at the Ding kiln site in Quyang County, Hebei. The first with an everted rim, illustrated in Selection of Ding Ware: the Palace Museum's Collection and Archaeological Excavation, Beijing, 2012, p. 280, pl. 122; the second also of rounded form but with a straight rim, is illustrated in Ding Ware: The World of White Elegance, Recent Archaeological Findings, Kawasaki, 2013, cat. no. 37.

See two other black 'Ding' bowls also of rounded form, the first sold in our London rooms, 8th December 1992, lot 143; and the second in our Hong Kong rooms, 29th April 1997, lot 500. 

Sotheby's. Monochrome, New York, 15 sept. 2015