Lot 130. A small and rare 'Cizhou' sgraffiato 'peony' jar, Northern Song dynasty (960–1127). Estimate 60,000 — 80,000 USD. Photo Sotheby's

the bulbous body rising from a circular foot and countersunk base to a lipped rim, freely carved through the layer of brown slip to the ivory-white layer beneath with two large peony blooms borne on a meandering scroll with trefoil leaves, each flower with combed details, all between wavy overlapping lappets around the shoulder and the foot, applied overall with a transparent glaze stopping neatly around the unglazed foot. Height 5 1/2  in., 14.1 cm

Provenance: A French Private Collection, acquired in the 1980s (by repute).

Notes; This jar is impressive for its bold and vigorous floral scroll which has been endowed with an added sense of three-dimensionality through its carving and delicate incised lines. Vases decorated with the sgraffiato technique with large peony blooms, in which the design is carved through the black slip covering a white slip beneath, were produced primarily at Cizhou kilns in the Guantai area, Cixian, Henan province, during the Northern Song dynasty, where fragments of similarly decorated vessels have been recovered, illustrated in The Cizhou Kiln Site at Guantai, Beijing, 1997, col. pl. 21, no. 2.

Jars decorated with similar peony motifs are more commonly known of larger size, such as one included in the exhibitionSong Ceramics, Tobu Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1999, cat. no. 93; and a meiping vase, from the collection of Margaret C. Osgood, now in the Worcester Art Museum, included in the exhibition Freedom of Clay and Brush through Seven Centuries in Northern China. Tz’u-chou Type Wares, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, 1980, cat. no. 39, where four other meipingof this type are illustrated: in the Kyoto National Museum, Kyoto, fig. 97, in the Museum Yamato Bunkakan, Nara, fig. 98, in the collection of the former royal house of Yi, Seoul, fig. 99, and in the British Museum, London fig. 100. For Cizhou jars of similar size to the present example but of differing decoration, see a carved and green-glazed jar with a rabbit design in the collection of the MOA Art Museum, Atami, included in the exhibition, Song Ceramics, Tobu Art Museum, 1999, cat. no. 104; and a white-ground sgraffiato 'peony' jar included in the exhibition Guantai Cizhou yaozhi [The Cizhou kiln site at Guantai], Beijing, 1997, pl. 27, fig. 4.

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, New York, 13 sept. 2016, 10:30 AM