Pottery dish with sancai glaze

A shallow pottery dish with a flat base and upturned rim, which is divided into eight lobes. The interior of the dish is moulded with a central stylized flower head, which has two rows of eight petals. Arranged around the rim are four naturalistically depicted lotus flowers, alternating with four peonies. The decoration is applied on a ground of wave pattern. The dish is covered in a pale-green glaze on which the flowers are reserved in amber glaze. The base is unglazed, showing the buff-coloured pottery. The inside has three tiny spur marks.

•  Delicate, polychrome glazed pottery dishes in round, oblong or square form with impressed floral designs were evidently popular with the nomadic Liao people. A dish of the same form and design but with a slightly different colour scheme, now in the Liaoning Provincial Museum is said to come from the Ganwa kilns in Inner Mongolia.1 Two similar dishes are in the Meiyintang collection 3 and a further example with green flowers on a cream and amber ground is in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.3

1 Zhongguo taoci quanji, Volume IX: Liao, Western Xia and Kin, 1999 – 2000, no. 105
2 Krahl, R. Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, Vol. Three (1) Paradou Writing, London, 2006, no. 1330, p. 309
3 Li, He Chinese Ceramics, The New Standard Guide, The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Thames and Hudson, London 1996, no. 213, p. 147 and 186