Lot 458. Two pottery ritual tripod food vessels and covers, ding, and a pottery green-glazed tripod incense burner and cover, lian, Han Dynasty. Sold for £ 1,147 (€ 1,337). © Bonhams

The first, of compressed globular shape with upright handles and three short legs, washed overall in creamy-white slip and painted on top of the cover with a swan within a C-scroll border,17cm (6 1/2in) wide; the second, of similar form but green-glazed, the cover with two overlapping fish, the surface partially iridescent, 16cm (6 1/2in) wide; and a green-glazed cylindrical tripod incense burner and cover, the body with moulded taotie-mask handles, the cover with geometric bands. 19.5cm (7 3/4in) diam.

Published, Illustrated and Exhibited: Roger Keverne Ltd., Summer Exhibition, London, 2002, no.31 (the cylindrical incense burner and cover).
Roger Keverne Ltd., Winter Exhibition, London, 2007, no.23 (painted ding)

Note : For a similar cylindrical tripod jar and cover, Han dynasty, see B.Laufer, Chinese Pottery of the Han Dynasty, 1962, pl.LIX, no.2; see another tripod jar and cover illustrate by J.P.Dubosc, Mostra d'Arte Cinese, Venice, 1954, no.287; and one in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, illustrated by W.Watson, Pre-Tang Ceramics of China: Chinese Pottery from 4000 BC to 600 AD, London, 1991, pl.78. For a painted pottery ding vessel, unearthed in 1986 in Luoyang City, Henan Province, see G.Wong, Treasures from the Han, Singapore, 1990, p.90,