Lot 65. A rare Dingyao moulded 'floral' bowl, Jin Dynasty (1115–1234); 19.3cm (7 5/8in) diam. Estimate £ 30,000 - 50,000 (€ 35,000 - 58,000). Sold for £ 25,062 (€ 29,258). Photo Bonhams.

The thinly potted bowl with a plain exterior and typical olive teardrop trails, the interior crisply moulded in six panels each with an upright cluster of floral sprays including daisy, peony and camellia, a strip of corroded metal adhering at one point to the unglazed biscuit rim, fitted box.

Provenance: Cheng Te-k'un, prior to October 1950
Bluett & Sons Ltd., London, 1950
Rolf, Lord Cunliffe (1899-1963), Honorary Keeper of the Far Eastern Collections at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Sold at Bonhams London, 11 November 2002, lot 16
Acquired from R & V Tregaskis, Sydney, on 3 February 2010, no.2896
The Reid Collection.

Rolf, Lord Cunliffe (1899 - 1963).

Rolf Cunliffe began collecting Chinese art when he was a Royal Air Force pilot stationed in London towards the end of World War II. Over the next 20 years, he acquired over one thousand Chinese ceramics, jades and bronzes. At his flat near Grosvenor Square, London, he had to build special storage units for his collection in the bathroom. As his son, the 3rd Baron Cunliffe remembers, ‘visiting collectors like the King of Sweden would spend happy hours sitting on the edge of the bath discussing the finer points of a jade rhyton or a Junyao bowl.’

Note: For a very similar Dingyao bowl, early 13th century, see Teiyo hakuji, Tokyo, 1983, no.133. For another similarly-moulded bowl in the Museum of East Asian Art, Bath, but with a central medallion of two fish, see B.McElney, Inaugural Exhibition, vol.1 Chinese Ceramics, Bath, 1993, no.88.; Another related Ding bowl with floral patterns in six sections around the interior, Song dynasty, is illustrated in Selected Chinese Antiquities from the Collection of Gustaf Adolf Crown Prince of Sweden, Stockholm, 1948, pp.118-119, pl.75.

Bonhams. Fine Chinese Art, London, 7 Nov 2019