Exhibited: Exhibition of Chinese Art, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 1954, cat. no. 466

Literature: Bo Gyllensvärd, Chinese Ceramics in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1964, pl. 174.

Chinese Ceramics in the Carl Kempe Collection, The Museum of Art and Far Eastern Antiquities in Ulricehamn, Ulricehamn, 2002, pl. 393.

Note: Dishes of this delicate potting, covered with a glaze that thins at the rim to reveal the black body with a prominent crackle effect are characteristic of 'Guan' wares of the Song dynasty. 'Ge' appears to be a connoisseurs' terminology known only from post-Song period texts and does not refer to a production area. The official (guan) kilns of the Southern Song court were located in the capital of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. It is known that Laohudong, situated within the ancient imperial palace walls of the Song capital, yielded the finest wares, but was not the only kiln that supplied the court.

Comparable 'Guan' dishes of this elegant mallow shape from the court collection are preserved in the Palace Museum, Beijing, and in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, but are rarely found in private hands or other museum collections in the world today. The pieces in Taipei and Beijing from the Palace collection give a good idea of the individuality of the production at the kilns during the Song dynasty, as each example vary considerably from each other. For example, the mallow shape can be six, eight, nine or ten-lobed and the size may vary between smaller vessels (diameter 9.5 cm) to larger pieces, such as the present washer. See a a nine-lobed 'Guan' washer from the Palace Museum collection, Zhongguo taoci quanji, vol. 8, Shanghai, 1999,  pl. 21 together with a ten-lobed washer illustrated in Robert Tichane, Those Celadon Blues, New York, 1978, fig. 14.2 and fig. 16.1..

Fragments of 'Guan' ware have been discovered at the recently excavated 'Guan' ware kiln site at Laohudong in Southern Hangzhou; for example see fragments of an eight-lobed 'Guan' washer (diameter 11.8 cm) published in Du Zhengxian (ed.), Hangzhou Laohudong yaozhi ciqi jingxuan, Beijing, 2002, p. 155.

Compare a dish of similar size, form and also with six evenly spaced spur marks on the base, from the R.F.A. Riesco (1877-1964) collection, Heathfield, sold several times in these rooms including 12th June 2003, lot 104; another, in the Baur collection, illustrated in The Baur Collection, vol. 1, Geneva, 1968, pl. A95; and a slightly smaller example, from the Edward T. Chow collection, sold in these rooms, 13th November 1972, lot 352, and again, 16th December 1980, lot 289.