Lot 280. A blue and white pouring bowl, Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). Estimate 80,000 — 120,000 USD. Unsold. Photo Sotheby's

with shallow rounded sides rising from a slightly concave base, set to one side with a small spout of square section applied underneath with a small scroll loop, painted to the interior with a central medallion enclosing a lotus bouquet, with a floral scroll band at the well, painted around the exterior with lotus petal panels and scrolls to the spout, the rim and base unglazed. Width 7 1/4  in., 18.3 cm

Notes: Pouring vessels of this type, known as yi, were important vessels of daily life and produced in silver and other metals as well as in Longquan celadon, white or blue monochrome, and copper-red and cobalt-blue decorated porcelain. Pouring bowls similarly decorated with a beribboned lotus bouquet, but enclosed by varying floral borders, include one from the collection of Jean Gordon Lee, included in the exhibition Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1968, cat. no. 133; one exhibited in Toyo no Sometsuke/Far Eastern Blue-and-White Porcelain, Mitsukoshi Department Store, Tokyo, 1977, cat. no. 15; and another sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 21st May 1979, lot 38.

Several pouring bowls of this form, but decorated with various floral designs, are illustrated in Zhongguo taoci quanji, vol. 11, Shanghai, 2000, pls 213-217; one depicting a hare, in the British Museum, London, is published in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2000, pl. 1:22; one painted with a pair of swimming mandarin ducks, from the collection of David L. Nathan and now in the National Gallery of Victoria, was sold in our London rooms, 15th May 1962, lot 55; and another painted with flower heads was sold in these rooms, 4th December 1984, lot 320, again in our London rooms, 12th November 2003, lot 88, from the Kwan Collection, and a third time in our Hong Kong rooms, 8th April 2010, lot 1890.

Chuimei Ho, in ‘Social Life Under the Mongols as Seen in Ceramics’, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Sobiety, vol. 59, 1994-95, p. 44, remarks that pouring bowls of this type appear in archaeological contexts often together with yuhuchunbottles or wine cups and mentions a wall painting from a Mongolian tomb in Chifeng, which shows a servant pouring liquid from such a yi bowl (or ladle) into a yuhuchun bottle.

The shape was probably copied from metal prototypes and a very similar silver pouring bowl was found together with a silveryuhuchun ping in a hoard at Hefei, Anhui province, which contained items inscribed with a name written in Phagspa characters as well as a date equivalent to 1333, both now in the Anhui Museum Provincial Museum, published in the exhibition catalogue The World of Kublilai Khan. Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, p. 83, fig. 115.

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, New York, 13 sept. 2016, 10:30 AM