The interior confidently carved with a budding and blossoming prunus branch under a crescent moon and wispy clouds below a narrow band carved with two foliate scrolls, covered inside and out with a glaze of soft olive-green tone pooling in the bottom around the small circular center, the convex base similarly glazed.

Provenance: Bluett, London, March 1987. 

Note: The motif carved on this bowl, a prunus branch under a crescent moon, appears to have been popular during the Southern Song dynasty as it is found not only on Longquan wares, but also wares from the Jizhou, Nanfeng and other kilns. A qingbai-glazed bowl carved with the same design, and dated Southern Song, is illustrated by R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Meiyintang Collection, vol. 1, London, 1994, p. 178, no. 515, where the auther notes that the design was "particularly popular with the Jiangxi potters of the Southern Song dynasty", and may allude to a line from a poem by Chen Yuyi (1090-1139), which "evokes the shadows of prunus blossoms by moonlight". A similar bowl is illustrated by Zhu Boqian, Celadons from Longquan Kilns, 1998, p. 209, no. 186, and another in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Bernat is illustrated by M. Medley, Yüan Porcelain and Stoneware, London, 1974, pl. 119B. 

Christie's. Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art, New York, 22 March 2007