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31 juillet 2017

A superb and rare parcel-gilt silver leys jar, Tang dynasty, 8th-9th century

A Superb and rare parcel-gilt silver leys jar  Tang dynasty, 8th-9th century

Lot 73. A superb and rare parcel-gilt silver leys jar, Tang dynasty, 8th-9th century, 10.9cm., 4 1/4 in. Estimate 70,000 — 90,000 GBP. Lot sold 264,500 GBP. Photo: Sotheby's.

of compressed globular form resting on a splayed foot and flaring at the dish-shaped mouth divided into four lobes, the body parcel-gilt and finely and delicately chased and engraved with three luscious peony sprays featuring large fully opened blooms and finely-veined feathery leaves, with a narrow band of overlapping petals finely engraved and gilt at the rim on the interior, the base incised with the two characters 'siyu'. Weight: 311g.

ExhibitedChinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1954-55, cat. no. 114.

LiteratureBo Gyllensvärd, 'T'ang Gold and Silver', Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 29, 1957, figs. 27a, 97r.

Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, The Museum of Art and Far Eastern Antiquities in Ulricehamn, Ulricehamn, 1999, pl. 116.

Note: Tang leys jars of this type appear to be designed after Sassanian silver and glass vessels. A closely related example, excavated in 1970 at Xi'an, Shaanxi province, is illustrated in a number of publications including Zhongguo zhuantong. Jinqi, Beijing, 2006, p. 48, right, and in Han Wei and Christian Deydier, Ancient Chinese Gold, Paris, 2001, pl. 410.  See another vessel of this form, unearthed in 1970 from Zaoyuan village near Xi'an published in National Treasure Collection of Rare Cultural Relics of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, 1998, p. 226; and three slightly later parcel-gilt silver vessels of similar form, but the neck not lobed, one unearthed at Lin'an, Zhejiang province and attributed to the Five Dynasties period, illustrated in Zhongguo jin yin boli falang qi quanji, vol. 2, Shijiazhuang, 2000, pl. 158; another from a Liao tomb in Inner Mongolia, illustrated ibid., pl. 315; and a third, from the Liao tomb of Yelu Yuzhi, Alukeerqin Banner (dated to 941 A.D.), included in the exhibition Treasures on Grassland, Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, 2000, p. 169.

Tang silver leys jars served as immediate prototypes for the ceramic versions; for example, see a Tang black-glazed jar, from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, illustrated in Robert D. Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers, Cambridge, Mass., 1995, pl. 7; and another celadon jar, in the Daiwa Bunkakan, published in Sui To no bijutsu, Tokyo, 1978, pl. 112.

Sotheby's. Masterpieces of Chinese Precious Metalwork, Early Gold and Silver; Early Chinese White, Green and Black Wares, London, 14 May 2008

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