An extremely fine and rare carved ‘Ding’ ‘Peony’ bowl, Northern Song dynasty. Estimate 1,000,000 — 1,500,000 USD. Photo Sotheby's.

the gently curved lobes rising to a slightly indented and everted rim, the interior finely carved and combed with a medallion of a leafy peony spray, the sides cleanly divided by six narrow fillets of slip each enclosing a single further spray of flowering peony, covered overall with a clear ivory glaze pooling in characteristic tear-drops down the exterior, all raised on a narrow tapered foot, the rim metal mounted, Japanese wood boxes. Diameter 8 1/16th in., 20.48 cm

Literature: White Porcelain of Ding Yao, Nezu Institute of Fine Arts, Tokyo, 1983, p. 77. cat. no. 132.

Notes: The finest qualities of glaze, carving and form that are associated with the best of Ding ware are found in this present piece. The fluid and confident carving is particularly notable in the naturalistic rendering of the peony flowers. Each individual petal is 'combed' adding texture and substance, the leaves are depicted from varying angles, each skillfully undercut along its edges strengthening the outline and adding to the illusion of depth. The carving is done in a purposeful manner that anticipates the pooling of the translucent glaze to further highlight the design. 

This style of carving is only found on a small number of other fine Ding pieces, such as a very similar bowl decorated with hibiscus blooms published in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - Porcelain of the Song Dynasty (I), Hong Kong, 1996, pl. 45, and again in Selections of Ding Ware, the Palace Museum's Collection of Archaeological Excavations, Beijing, 2012, no. 63. (fig. 1)

 'Ding' 'Hibiscus' bowl. The Palace Museum, Beijing

Another foliate-rim bowl in the Palace Museum but carved with duck and lotus is illustrated in ibid., no. 82. A slightly larger bowl of this form but carved with lotus in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, is included in the Museum’s exhibition Decorated Porcelains of Dingzhou. White Ding Wares from the Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2014, cat. no. II-39, together with another carved with flower and fruit sprays, cat. no. II-40; and a fragment of a similar Song bowl, that forms part of the Palace Museum's vast shard collection including Ding shards recovered from the kiln sites at Jiancicun and Yanchuancun in Quyang County, Hebei, published in Gugong Bowyuguan cang Zhongguo gudai yaozhi biaoben. Hebei juan [Specimens from China’s ancient kilns preserved in the Palace Museum: Hebei, vol. 2], Beijing, 2006, pl. 169 (top). A similarly formed bowl but carved with lotus flowers, also from the Collection of Sakamoto Goro, was sold in these rooms 16th September 2014, lot 7. 

Ding wares are ranked among the ‘Five Famous Wares of the Song Dynasty’, a term coined by collectors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Celebrated for their thin potting, fine white body, which does not require a slip to appear white after firing, and an ivory-colored glaze which tends to run down in somewhat darker ‘tears’, Ding wares enjoyed great renown for their elegant forms, often derived from contemporaneous silver and lacquer vessels and which found favor with the court and wealthy monasteries during the Song and Jin periods. 

Another characteristic of Ding ware is the use of metal to bind the rim. The contrasting color of the distinctive bronze, copper, and sometimes precious metal, rims enhanced the aesthetic beauty of the wares while setting the Ding ware apart from the ordinary. Ts’ai Mei-fen of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, suggests that the metal-banded rim was the popular taste of the time, possibly instituted because of the popular practices of decorating edges. See Ts’ai Mei-fen, ‘A Discussion of Ting Ware with Unglazed Rims and related Twelth-Century Official Porcelain’, Arts of the Sung and Yuan, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996, pp. 109-31. 

Sotheby's. Chinese Art through the Eye of Sakamoto Gor – Ceramics, New York, 17 mars 2015, 10:00 AM