A Jizhou resist-decorated paper-cut conical bowl, Southern Song Dynasty, 12th-13th century. Estimate $40,000 – $60,000. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2015

The bowl has widely flaring sides and is decorated on the interior in resist technique with a pattern of fifteen plum blossoms arranged in two tiers above one in the center, and reserved in the dark brown glaze against a finely variegated buff matte ground. The exterior is covered with a dark brown glaze ending atop a dark reddish-brown slip that also partially covers the foot and base. 6 1/8 in. (15.5 cm.) diam., box

Provenance: Christie's New York, 20 September 2002, lot 289.

Notes: The Jizhou kilns in Jiangxi province were perhaps the most daring, versatile and technically creative kilns of the Song dynasty. One of the most innovative techniques was using paper stencils to create resist designs. For a discussion of the processes involved in producing wares using this technique, see R. Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Harvard University Art Museums, 1996, pp. 36-7. The author also illustrates a bowl very similar to the present example, from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, pp. 249-50, no. 101. 

Bowls of this type are represented in a number of famous collections including the Shanghai Museum, illustrated inZhongguo taoci quanji, vol. 15, Japan, 1986, no. 75; one illustrated by J. Ayers in Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, vol. I, Geneva, 1999, p. 97, no. 51; and one in the Tokyo National Museum illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 1, Tokyo, 1976, pl. 93. Similar decoration can also be seen on bowls of a more rounded conical shape such as the example illustrated by R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. I, London, 1994, p. 283, no. 525, and one in Song Ceramics from the Kwan Collection, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1994, pp. 382-83, no. 173.

Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 15 - 16 March 2015, New York, Rockefeller Plaza