Lot 13, A blue-glazed ‘Jun’ dish, Song dynasty. Estimate 200,000 — 300,000 HKD (23,389 - 35,083 EUR). Lot sold 1,750,000 HKD (197,650 EUR). Photo: Sotheby's

heavily potted with shallow rounded sides rising from a short tapered foot to a wide everted rim, covered overall in a milky lavender-blue glaze suffused with a network of subtle crackling and thinning to a mushroom tone at the rim, the glaze coagulating unevenly around the neatly cut foot, revealing the buff-orange body; 20.7cm, 8 1/8 in.

Provenance: Gurevitch, until 1962.
Bluett & Sons Ltd, London, 1963 (£350).
Collection of Roger Pilkington (1928-69), from 1963 (£750).

Note: This flat dish represents a classic ‘Jun’ type, although its large size and well-controlled opalescent glaze make it especially notable. Dishes of this shape and covered by a pale blue glaze, are more commonly known of slightly smaller size, such as two dishes with five spur marks on the base in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in A Panorama of Ceramics in the National Palace Museum. Chün Ware, Taipei, 1999, pls. 54 and 55; another published in The Charles B. Hoyt Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 1964-72, vol. II: Chinese Art: Liao, Sung, and Yüan Dynasties, pl. 54; and a fourth dish included in the exhibition Sodai no tōji [Song ceramics], Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, 1979, cat. no. 69.

Further examples sold at auction include one from the collections of E.G. Kostolany and Glenn Allen, sold in our London rooms in 1953 and 1974, in these rooms in 1979, and again in our London rooms, 12th June 2003, lot 110; another from the collections of Mrs Alfred Clark and Edward T. Chow, illustrated in Basil Gray, Early Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, London, 1952, pl.  84, and sold in our London rooms, 16th December 1980, lot 272; and a third dish, from the collections of P. Steiner and G.A. Kolkhorst, sold three times in our London rooms in 1948, 1959 and most recently, 13th June 1989, lot 151.

Sotheby's. The Pilkington Collection of Chinese Art, Hong Kong, 06 Apr 2016, 10:00 AM