Lot 728. A silver lobed oval bowl, China, Tang dynasty (AD 618-907); 4 5/8 in. (11.7 cm.) wide, cloth box; 101 g. Estimate $15,000 - $20,000. Price Realized $81,250. © Christie's Image Ltd 2015

The exterior engraved with a leafy scroll against a ring-punched ground below the slightly everted rim, the plain interior with raised ribs outlining the lobes, raised on an oval foot pinched in the center and engraved with pendent leaf tips on a ring-punched ground

Provenance: The Collection of Robert H. Ellsworth, New York, acquired in Hong Kong, 1993.

Note: Three silver cups of this unusual lobed shape are illustrated by Ryoichi Hayashi in The Silk Road and the Shoso-in, New York/Tokyo, 1975, figs. 77, 78 and 96, only one of which, in the Hakutsuru Art Museum, is dated Tang dynasty, eighth century, which has parcel-gilt decoration on a ring-punched ground and has a lobed foot. The other two are described as Sassanian, fig. 77, dated sixth or seventh century, in the Idemitsu Art Gallery, which has a waisted rectangular foot, and fig. 96, dated sixth century, in the Tenri Museum, Nara, which has an oblong foot. Neither of these has a ring-punched ground, a Tang decorative technique that differentiates the background. Also illustrated, fig. 94, is a gilded-bronze cup dated eighth century in the Shoso-in, which is raised on a lobed foot, and is most likely Tang. The same shape can also be seen in a green glass cup in the Shoso-in, fig. 78. The author infers, p. 90, that this shape is most likely Sassanian in origin

Christie's. THE COLLECTION OF ROBERT HATFIELD ELLSWORTH PART IV - CHINESE WORKS OF ART: METALWORK, SCULPTURE AND EARLY CERAMICS, 20 March 2015, New York, Rockefeller Plaza.