Lot 1487. A rare small Yueyao celadon flower-form dish, Northern Song dynasty, 10th century; 4 in. (10.2 cm.) wide. Estimate USD 6,000 - USD 8,000. Price realised USD 37,500. © Christie's Images Ltd 2013 

The dish has shallow flared sides that rise to the rim carved as five petals, and is covered all over and on the flat base with a grey-green glaze. There are six spur marks on the base.

Provenance: The Ruth Dreyfus Collection, Paris, March 1970.
Arthur M. Sackler Collections, New York.
Else Sackler Collection, and thence by descent within the family.

Exhibited: Oriental Ceramic Society, London, The Arts of the T'ang Dynasty, 1955, pl. 260.
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 3500 Years of Chinese Art: Ceramics from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 1987.

Note: A similar Yue dish of this rare shape and size was sold at Sotheby's New York, 19-20 March 2013, lot 253. A similar, but larger (15.7 cm.) dish in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is illustrated by M. Medley, T'ang Pottery and Porcelain, London, 1981, p. 112, pl. 105, and the author, p. 110, refers to the flower-shaped bowls (col. pl. O) and the "bracket-lobed series" of dishes (pl. 105), as "among the most elegant and usually of the very finest quality," and further notes that they are "glazed all over."

Christie's. Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art, New York, 19 - 20 September 2013