the bowl worked in rounded relief with two rows of ten petals below the everted rim, each petal superbly engraved with small birds flying amidst flowering stems and sprays against a finely ring-matted ground, all supported on a knopped stem rising from a gently splayed base divided into ten petals and forming a scalloped outline. WEIGHT 53g.

Exhibited: Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1954-55, cat. no. 111.

Note: See a closely related stemcup, in the Hakutsuru Art Museum, Kobe, illustrated in Bo Gyllensvard, 'T'ang Gold and Silver', Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 29, 1957, pl. 4(b); another from the collections of David-Weill and Arthur M. Sackler, sold in these rooms, 29 February 1972, lot 168, and again at Christie's New York, 1 December 1994, lot 65; an example in the Shaanxi History Museum is published in Zhongguo qingtong jinyin qi dingji tudian, Hong Kong, 2007, p. 268, pl. 36. Compare also the famous gilded silver stemcup decorated with flying birds, excavated from the storing site at Hansenzhai Weishijie, Xi'an, Shaanxi province and now in the Shaanxi History Museum, illustrated in Sekai bijutsu taizenshu: Toyo hen, vol. 4, Tokyo, 1997, pl. 172.   

Another related cup is published in Hugh Scott, The Golden Age of Chinese Art. The Lively T'ang Dynasty, Rutland, Vermont, 1967, pl. 112; one from the Mayer collection, is included in Gyllensvard, op.cit., pl. 8(e); a further example was included in the exhibition Masterpieces of Chinese Art from the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 1989, cat. no. 25; and one from the collection of Dr. Pierre Uldry was included in the exhibition Chinesisches Gold und Silber, Rietberg Museum, Zurich, 1994, cat. no. 136.

Sotheby's. London, Masterpieces of Chinese Precious Metalwork: Early Chinese Gold and Silver, 14 May 2008