Late Tang Dynasty (late 9th or early 10th Century)
Diameter: 13.4 cm
Provenance
Johannes Hellner Collection, Stockholm.
Exhibited and Published
Opulence and Desire, The Tang Dynasty, 2005, New York, Weisbrod Chinese Art, Ltd.
Illustrated
Oriental Ceramics: Wodd's Greatest Collections, 9, Museum Of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, Sweden, 1976, fig. 59.
Tang and Liao Ceramics by William Watson, Rizzoli, New York, Fribourg,1984, fig. 177, pg. 168.
The shallow white-glazed Stoneware cup with an attached stand stands on a short ring foot and is molded and shaped to suggest a flower on a floating lotus leaf. Four raised ribs on the inside of the rounded cup are combined with pinched notches on the thick lip, Inside the attached stand of a more flat "open' shape, raised lines radiate toward notches on the rim. Traces of thumb prints are left where the potter curled in the rim at regular intervals between the radiating lines and notches, completing the impression of a five lobed curled leaf. The pale green tinted White glaze covers the entire piece, including the recessed base with the support clay from the kiln.
Xingyao Kiln is situated in today's Neiqiu County in Hebei Province, a part of Xingzhou during the Tang Dynasty after which the kiln was named. According to tradition this kiln seems to have been a center for the earliest true porcelain ware. Characteristic of this ware are the vitrified white pate and the cold white glaze.
A similar Tang Dynasty stand, from the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, vol.8, no. 67, and also in Gyllensvard, Chinese Ceramics, no. 337. It measures 14 cm. in diameter and has no cup.