skilfully modelled in the form of a lion sitting on its haunches with the front right leg bent and paw resting on a brocade ball, the beast portrayed in a ferocious poise with piercing eyes below the thick bushy eyebrows, its mouth rendered slightly agape and revealing the tip of its upturned tongue, above three locks of beard trailing onto its collar, the reverse realistically depicted with pronounced ribs flanking its long bushy tail, the figure covered overall with a translucent olive-green glaze pooling to a deeper tone in the recesses.

Provenance: Bluett & Sons Ltd, London, 1922, by repute.
Christie’s South Kensington, 20th June 2002, lot 563.
Tony Omura, Hong Kong.

Note: Fashioned in the form of a menacing Buddhist lion resting one of its paws on a ball, figures of animals were made at various kilns from the Jin dynasty to the Song period. Often made in pairs, these lions were either fired as free-standing sculptures or as stands for lamps and pillows. Fragments of lions have been recovered at the Yaozhou kiln site in Huangpu, near Tongchuan, Shaanxi province, and illustrated in The Yaozhou Kiln Site of the Song Period, Beijing, 1998, pl. CXX, nos 1 and 2; and a free-standing lion from the Mayer Collection was sold at Christie’s London, 24th June 1974, lot 38. See also two lion-shaped covers, one sold in our New York rooms, 19th July 2007, lot 396; and another attributed to the Northern Song dynasty, from the Fanny Tewksbury King Collection and preserved in the Cleveland Museum of Art, accession no. 1966.26.

The silhouette of this piece is reminiscent of figures of lions covered in a qingbai glaze; see a lion-shaped incense burner illustrated in Chai Kiln & Hutian Kiln, Guangzhou, 2003, p. 70.