Note! This is the auction houses original description (A Chinese celadon dish of shaped form POSSIBLY Song Dynasty, 15cm diameter) Personally I would not pay £100 for this dish, you can work out why yourself.
Original Article Below
A Chinese monochrome brush washer, featuring one of the most coveted glazes from the Song dynasty, fetched an astonishing £120,000 at a Norfolk auction.
The 12th-century stoneware dish, estimated at £500-600, took 15 minutes to sell at Keys in Aylsham on July 12-13, with 237 bids. Including the 22% buyer’s premium, the Italian winner will pay nearly £150,000.
The sought-after piece, a 6-inch (15 cm) mallow flower form dish with a translucent blue-grey glaze and intricate crazing, attracted intense competition from online, room, and phone bidders across China, Malaysia, the UK, and continental Europe.
Despite a star crack in the well, it is believed to be a Guan six-lobed brush washer from the Southern Song (1127-1279) period.
Guan ware was the Southern Song’s adaptation of Ru wares, the legendary duck-egg blue ‘official ware’ produced for the Northern Song (960–1127) court at the Baofeng kilns in Henan province around 1100 AD.
Following their retreat to a new capital at Lin’an (modern-day Hangzhou), the Song dynasty re-established its pottery production from scratch, utilizing different raw materials and new kilns while maintaining the same technological expertise to create their distinctive, crackle-glazed monochrome stonewares.
Both Ru and Guan wares were highly imitated from the Yuan period onward and remain equally esteemed. However, while fewer than 100 Ru pieces are believed to exist, Hangzhou Guan wares are more abundant and diverse, surviving in a variety of forms, body types, and glaze tones.
This particular piece originated from a Norfolk estate and was part of a collection acquired by a family member in Hong Kong during the 1930s.
