Lot 231. A rectangular painted 'Cizhou' pillow, Jin-Yuan dynasty, by Wang Shouming, 1351. Width 17 3/8  in., 44.1 cm. Estimate 20,000 — 30,000 USD. Unsold. Photo: Sotheby's.

of rectangular section with a slightly concave sloping top, delicately painted in brown over a creamy-white slip with a military official  approaching a scholar seated in an open pavilion, with their attendants, within a shaped cartouche reserved on a floral ground, with two quatrefoil panels enclosing an inscription reading Zhangbin Yiren zhi ('Made by the idler of the bank of the Zhang'), the sides with similar panels enclosing peony and lotus sprays, reserved on floral grounds, the unglazed base with an impressed mark reading Wang shi Shouming, and with an inscription written in black ink dated to the twenty-first day in the twelfth month of the eleventh year of Zhizheng, corresponding to 1351.

Provenance: Warren E. Cox, New York, 23rd October 1957. 
Collection of Stephen Junkunc, III (d. 1978).

Provenance: Mayuyama & Co. Ltd., Tokyo.
Nagao Art Museum, Tokyo, acc. no. 144.
Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo.
Chinese Ceramics Museum, Kyushu.

Note: Rectangular pillows finely painted with narrative scenes within lobed, shaped cartouches reserved against dense floral grounds were produced during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Wang Shouming is believed to have produced pillows in Cixian, Hebei province during the Jin dynasty. Compare another pillow by Wang Shouming in the British Museum, London, purchased from George Eumorfopoulos in 1936, acc. no. 1936,1012.219.

Pillow by Wang Shouming, Jin dynasty,circa 1200-1234, slipped, iron-brown painted and glazed Cizhou-type stoneware; 16.7 x 42.7 x 16.8 cm, purchased from George Eumorfopoulos in 1936, acc. no. 1936,1012.219. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

A pillow with the same inscription, excavated in Cixian, Hebei province is now in the Cixian Museum.Another with the same inscriptions was excavated in 1977 at Cixian and is now in the Office for Management of Cultural Relics, Cixian. see Zhang Bai (ed), Complete Collection of Ceramic Art Unearthed in China, volume 3, Hebei, 中國出土瓷器全，Beijing 2008, p. 186

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, New York, 12 sept. 2018, 10:30 AM