Lot 3213. A large 'Cizhou' black-glazed sgraffiato 'floral' meiping, Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), 38.6 cm, 15 1/8  in. Estimate 200,000 — 300,000 HKD. Lot sold 600,000 HKD. Photo: Sotheby's.

well potted with a tall slender tapered body sweeping up to a round shoulder, surmounted by a short waisted neck and tapering mouth, the body freely carved through the layer of dark brown slip with three main registers, the slip falling short of the countersunk base, the central frieze with a large peony and lotus bloom against a striated ground, between a thin border picked out with scrolling motifs and a broad band with upright overlapping lappets.

Provenance: Collection of Yeung Wing Tak.

Exhibited: Yang Yongde kangli zhencang heiyou ci/ Black Porcelain from the Mr & Mrs Yeung Wing Tak Collection, Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum of the Nanyue King, Guangzhou, 1997, cat. no. 19.
Ancient Chinese Black Wares from the Collection of Mr and Mrs Yeung Wing Tak, Art Museum, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1999.

Note: The present vase belongs to a rare group of sgraffiato wares involving a labour-intensive technique to produce the two-slip decoration. Shards similarly decorated and carved have been found at the Cizhou kilns at Guantai, Cixian, Hebei Province, the majority of which seems to emerge from strata corresponding to the Northern Song dynasty; for related fragments recovered from this site see Yutaka Mino, The Cizhou Kiln at Guantai, Beijing, 1997, col. pl. 21, fig. 96.

For discussions and illustrations of similar pieces in important collections, compare Suzanne Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989, p. 93, no. 88 for an illustration of a carved meiping now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. A vase in the British Museum is illustrated in Yutaka Mino, Freedom of Clay and Brush through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz'u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1981, pp. 102-3, pl. 39 and fig. 97. Others, in the Kyoto National Museum and the Ise Foundation respectively, are published in Charm of Black & White Ware: Transition of Cizhou Type Wares, Osaka Municipal Museum of Art, 2002, nos 51 and 52. A more freely incised meiping with different borders is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, illustrated in Wu Tung, Earth Transformed Chinese Ceramics in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 2001, p. 63. The John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection example is illustrated in Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society's Mr and Mrs John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, New York, 1994, p. 161, no. 154.