Circular Dish with Angled Side Walls and Decoration of Two Fish in a Lotus Pond
12th-13th century
Description
This circular dish has steeply angled side walls that rise from the circular, flat base. The dish was potted over a hump mold placed at the center of the potter's wheel. The mold set the dish's profile and its diameter just as it also transferred its decoration; with his hands, the potter determined the thickness of the walls and finished its exterior. The molded decoration on the interior rises in sight relief; the decoration on the floor depicts two fish swimming in a lotus pond, while that around the cavetto depicts various aquatic plants. The exterior of the dish is undecorated. A clear, pale, sky-blue glaze covers the dish inside and out, except for the mouth rim, which is unglazed and now is covered by a wide silver band (probably of recent vintage). The mouth rim was left unglazed so that the dish could be fired upside down; this method not only allowed the base to be fully glazed but maximized efficiency in stacking the kiln, since pieces of increasing size could be placed over smaller ones in the saggars. The present silver rim doubtless is a replacement for the original, which would have been of approximately the same width but likely would have been much, much thinner (just slightly thicker than foil), and which might have been made of tin--simulating silver-- rather than actually in silver. We likely never will be able to determine the exact characteristics of the now-lost original metal rim.
Dimensions
H. 2.8 x Diam. 14.0 cm (1 1/8 x 5 1/2 in.)
Provenance
Edmund Lin (1928-2006; Professor, Harvard Medical School), Boston; by bequest to the Harvard Art Museum
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