Lot 1. A rare Junyao octafoil 'lotus' dish, 13th century. Estimate HK$ 400,000 - 600,000 (€48,000 - 72,000). Photo: Bonhams.

The dish rising from a slightly recessed base to shallow curved sides below a flared barbed rim, covered overall in a thick lustrous lavender-blue glaze thinning to a mushroom tone at the rim. 11.6cm (4 1/2in) diam.

Provenance: Edward T. Chow (1910-1980)
Sotheby's Hong Kong, The Edward T. Chow Collection: Part Two, Early Chinese Ceramics and Ancient Bronzes, 16 December 1980, lot 274
Colonel R.J.H. Carson, OBE (1910-1983) and Mrs L.M.F. Carson (d.1987) Collection no.67
A distinguished British private collection, and thence by descent.

Notes: Edward 'Eddie' T. Chow (1910-1980), resided at the French Concession of Shanghai city and lived briefly in New York, before moving to Hong Kong in 1949 and then Switzerland in 1967. He was amongst the most respected dealers of his generation and known for his three fundamental tenets in building his collection: rarity, quality and decoration. 

The present dish is rare in its lotus-lappet shaped barbed-rim form, indicative of the period between the Southern Song and Yuan dynasty. Compare a related Junyao barbed-rim dish, Song/Yuan dynasty, in the collection of the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt (previously named the Städtliches Völkermuseum), illustrated by R.Schmidt, Chinesische Keramik, Frankfurt, 1924, pl.47(d); and see another related example, illustrated by A.Leth in Catalogue of Selected Objects of Chinese Art in the Museum of Decorative Art, Copenhagen, Copenhagen, 1959, no.88. Similar lotus-shaped wares were produced during the Southern Song dynasty in other materials such as silver and lacquer; compare a silver 'lotus' barbed-rim dish, excavated from a tomb dated to 1274 of Zhou, wife of Wu Chou, De'an Prefecture, Jiangxi Province, and a lacquer cup stand, Southern Song dynasty, illustrated in Sō Gen no bi: denrai no shikki o chūshin ni, Tokyo, Nezu Bijutsukan, 2004, no.158, p.189, fig.62d.

See a related Junyao hexafoil 'lotus' dish, Song dynasty, which was sold at Sotheby's London on 12 July 2006, lot 39.

Bonhams. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 2016-11-29, 14:00 HKT - HONG KONG, ADMIRALTY