Lot 109. A pair of foliate-shaped silver dishes, Northern Song dynasty, 10th century, 11.1cm., 4 3/8 in. Estimate 3,000 — 4,000 GBP. Lot sold 14,900 GBP. Photo: Sotheby's.

elegantly worked in the shape of a six-petalled flower with a flat base and straight sides, the rim with six notches marking the petals, the interior and exterior undecorated and with some malachite encrustation. Quantity: 2. Weight 90g. and 102g.

Exhibited: Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1954-55, cat. no. 170.

Literature: Bo Gyllensvärd, Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1953, pl. 170.

Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, The Museum of Art and Far Eastern Antiquities in Ulricehamn, Ulricehamn, 1999, pl. 163.

Note: Six-lobed stoneware bowls of very similar form from the Ding and Yaozhou kilns were among the donations recovered from the 'underground palace' (digong) of the early Song dynasty Jingzhi Temple pagoda at Dingzhou, Hebei province, which was built in AD 977; see the exhibition catalogue Treasures from the Underground Palaces. Excavated Treasures from Northern Song Pagodas, Dingzhou, Hebei Province, China, Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, 1997, nos. 71 and 79, the former inscribed with the date of its donation, equivalent to AD 977. This repository contained also a plain silver bowl without lobes, ibid., pl. 13. The six-lobed shape represented an innovation of the 10th century. Related green-glazed bowls enshrined in the 'underground palace' of the Famen Temple at Fufeng, Shaanxi province, for example, which was sealed a century earlier, are still of the five-lobed variety.

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