Lot 865. A rare Ding persimmon-glazed hexafoil bowl, Northern Song dynasty (960-1127); 6 5/8 in. (16.8 cm.) diam., Japanese double wood box. Estimate USD 70,000 – USD 100,000. Price Realised USD 113,400. © Christie's 2023

The bowl has rounded flared sides that rise from the small knife-cut foot to the notched, petal-lobed rim, and is covered overall with a glaze of rich, slightly lustrous reddish-brown color that thins on the rim and also covers the base.

Provenance: Sheldon L. and Barbara R. Breitbart Collection, New York.
Property from the Breitbart Collection; Sotheby's New York, 16 September 2014, lot 105.
J. J. Lally & Co., New York, no. 4837.

Note: Persimmon glazes were made at several northern Chinese kilns in the Song and early Jin periods, including the Ding and Yaozhou kilns, and were particularly admired on forms associated with the tea ceremony. It is noted in Cao Zhao’s 1388 publication Gegu Yaolun (The Essential Criteria of Antiques) that 'purple' (i.e. persimmon) and black Ding wares were even more expensive than white Ding wares (see Sir Percival David, Chinese Connoisseurship - The Ko Ku Yao Lun, London, 1971, p. 141).

A similar Ding persimmon-glazed bowl, also with a petal-lobed rim, is in the Freer Gallery of Art, illustrated by J. A. Pope, et. al., in The World’s Great Collections: Oriental Ceramics, vol. 9, The Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Tokyo, 1972, no. 62. Other Ding persimmon-glazed bowls include the example illustrated by S. Kwan, Song Ceramics from the Kwan Collection, Hong Kong, 1994, pp. 82-83, no. 23, and the Ding persimmon-brown glazed bowl of slightly larger size in the Princeton Art Museum illustrated by Z. Kwok, The Eternal Feast: Banqueting in Chinese Art from the 10th to 14th Century, Princeton, 2019, p. 170, no. 41.

A persimmon-glazed bowl of this form found at the Ding kiln site is illustrated in Ding Ware: The World of White Elegance – Recent Archaeological Findings, The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 2013, pp. 162-163, no. 36, where it is dated mid-Northern Song dynasty.

Christie's. J. J. Lally& Co., New York, 23.03.2023