Lot 3671. An exceptional and very rare pair of 'guan'-inscribed Dingyao square dishes, Five dynasties - early Northern Song dynasty (907-1227); 9.6 cm, Japanese wood box. Lot Sold 48,260 HKD (Estimate 30,000 - 90,000 HKD) © Sotheby'z 2025

Provenance: The Shibata family collection (Mr Shibata Akihiko (1940-2004) and Mrs Yuko Shibata (1944-)).
Tokyo Bijutsu Club, Tokyo, 1980s.
Chang Wei-Hwa & Co., Taipei, 12th November 1992.
Christie's Hong Kong, 30th May 2018, lot 2925.

Exhibited: Collectors, Curators, Connoisseurs: A Century of the Oriental Ceramic Society 1921-2021 , London, 2021, cat. no. 52.

Ding Guan Ware, for Secular and Underground Palaces
Regina Krahl

Court interest in fine ceramics developed only in the second half of the Tang dynasty (618 – 907), when white and green stonewares began to be cherished among tea connoisseurs and were discovered as treasures worthy of the underground palaces devoted to the Buddha. On some exceptional wares from a few outstanding kilns this royal attention found lasting tangible expression in inscriptions, incised on the vessels before firing, in particular in form of the character guan ('official'). The custom of marking ceramics in this way started in the late Tang dynasty, continued over the Five Dynasties period (907 – 960), and ended around the early Northern Song dynasty (960 – 1127), with the guan character being found overwhelmingly on white Ding wares of the tenth century from Quyang county, Hebei province.

The exact meaning of this inscription and the destination of the wares thus distinguished has been much discussed. The study is made complicated because of the many different courts ruling parts of China during that time, which besides Tang and Song included five consecutive dynasties in the Central Plain, ten kingdoms mainly in the south, as well as the Qidan Liao (907 – 1125) in the northeast. The production of guan -marked ceramics does not seem to have been concentrated on one particular reign period and their usage does not seem to have been limited to the territory of any one of these dynasties. Vessels thus inscribed – although rare altogether – have been found all over China, with a concentration in the central regions, but equally in the southeast, the southwest, and the far north, and they have appeared in pagoda foundations as well as in royal and other high-ranking tombs. It therefore seems futile to search for one court that may have ordered or particular received such wares. Although the guan mark, which is also, more rarely, found on Xing, Yaozhou and other wares, may originally have been applied at the instigation of one particular ruler, it seems to have become a prized marker of excellence in general, coveted in palaces far and wide.

In the tenth century, when these dishes were made, the Ding kilns produced the finest wares in the Chinese realm, and many appear to have been chosen specially as donations for Buddhist temples. early Song period, when the pagodas of the Jingzhisi and Jingzhongyuansi in Dingzhou received their valuable donations, it was predominantly Ding wares that were chosen, several bearing the guan inscription; see Chika kyūden no ihō/Treasures from the Underground Palaces: Excavated Treasures from Northern Song Pagodas, Dingzhou, Hebei Province, China , Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, 1997, passim , with guan -marked pieces cat. nos 58, 60, 69, 71-4, 91. A pair of white dishes of the present shape has also been excavated from a pagoda base located at the border between Song and Liao territory, at Daliang in Wuqing, Tianjin, illustrated in Zhang Bai, ed., Zhongguo chutu ciqi quanji/Complete Collection of Ceramic Art Unearthed in China , Beijing, 2008, vol. 2, pl. 11.

No other example of a Ding dish of this form inscribed with the guan character appears to have been published. The square shape of the present dishes is extremely rare among Ding wares but appears to have been developed by the Ding kilns, perhaps following wooden or metal models. A fragment of a very similar dish but with a butterfly design in slip relief in the center, has been excavated at the Ding kiln site in Quyang county in a late Tang/Five Dynasties context, and is illustrated – the outline wrongly reconstructed – in Ding ci ya ji. Gugong Bowuyuan zhencang ji chutu Dingyao ciqi huicui/Selection of Ding Ware. The Palace Museum's Collection and Archaeological Excavation , Palace Museum, Beijing, 2012, pl. 20; and one complete square Ding dish, again with butterfly design, excavated at Yanjialing, Changsha, Hunan, and attributed to the Five Dynasties period, is published in Zhang Bai, op.cit. , vol. 13, pl. 196 top.

This angular dish shape is better known from later sancai versions, for which these Ding dishes seem to have provided the model. Sancai dishes of similar form have been discovered at the Longquanwu kiln site in Beijing, at the time in Liao territory, which also copied white Ding wares, but at lesser quality. As the Ding kilns were located close to the border with Liao territory, they experienced turbulent times Although after the fall of the Tang. not permanently falling under Liao control, the Liao army occupied Quyang county briefly in 922 and captured enemy soldiers. This may have led also to the emigration of some Ding potters to the Longquanwu kilns, but with the fabled Ding kilns being located so close by, they would have exerted stylistic influence in any case. Sancai wares were made at Longquanwu from the mid-Liao period onwards, and square dishes with sancai glazes have been discovered in the second phase of the kilns' operation, considered to fall into the period between 1032 and 1056, that is, about a century after the appearance of this shape at the Ding kilns; for a fragment of a sancai square dish discovered at the kiln site, molds for such dishes and a dish reproduced after these finds, see Beijing Longquanwu yao fajue baogao/Excavations of the Longquanwu Kiln-site in Beijing , Beijing, 2002, col. pl. 3: 2-4, p. 139, fig. 43: 1; and pp. 182-4., fig. 59, pl. 57: 1, and fig. 60: 1, and cover.

Compare also a pair of white dishes with more complex molded design discovered in a Liao tomb at Sangshu, Shuangliao county, Jilin, in Zhang Bai, op.cit. , vol. 2, pl. 168. Like the pair from the Daliang pagoda mentioned above, these densely decorated dishes seem much less elegant than the present pair, closer in style to the sancai versions, and may not have been made by the Ding kilns, but may represent Liao copies. Square white dishes of the fine quality of the present pair are exceedingly rare.