An exceptional and important 'Guan' lobed dish, Southern Song dynasty

Collection of Frederick M. Mayer (1899-1974).

Christie’s London, 24th-25th June 1974, lot 59 (offered).

Spink & Son Ltd., London, prior to 1990. 

Chang Foundation, Taipei.

James Spencer, Zhongguo lidai taoci xuanji / Selected Chinese Ceramics from Han to Qing Dynasties, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1990, pl. 41.

The story of guan (‘official’) ware is one of mystery and delight. Born from necessity amidst the chaos of the twelfth century, these extraordinary pieces survive today in minuscule numbers in the world’s most important collections and are celebrated as among the most beloved and iconic Imperial ceramics ever produced.

The phenomenon of ceramics specifically commissioned for the Chinese court was not born with guan ware. Starting in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and culminating in the Northern Song (960–1127), the ruling dynasties of China turned to the finest artisans and kiln sites of their day to furnish their palaces with tribute pieces. From the Yue kilns of Zhejiang to the Ding kilns of Hebei, successive rulers left their mark on the visual history of China in their patronage of kiln sites and endorsement of certain aesthetics. By the late Northern Song dynasty, this aesthetic was one of refinement. Developing in tandem with the Buddhist and Neo-Confucianist teachings of the day, Northern Song emperors – and particularly the penultimate Emperor Huizong (r. 1100–1126) – endorsed a literati aesthetic of radical minimalism, embracing the spontaneity and understated beauty of the natural world. Unlike the more elaborate decoration of preceding rulers, dubbed as 'gaudy as jewelry' by Emperor Huizong (see Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Accumulating Culture. The Collections of Emperor Huizong, Seattle, 2008, p. 344f), the late Northern Song court saw the development of the rich tradition of scholarly art, dominated by restraint and modesty over glamour and ostentatiousness.

In the realm of ceramics, this aesthetic had been embodied by the famous Ru wares of Baofeng, Henan. Of simple forms with a plain glaze said to mimic the 'blue of the sky after rain,' Ru ware aligned perfectly with Song views of subtlety, balance and unstatement and, in the latter years of the Northern Song, appears to have been produced specifically and exclusively to the orders of the court. However, this patronage was to be short-lived. Following the invasion of northern China by the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in 1125, the Song court was forced to flee from its capital of Bianliang (modern-day Kaifeng) and settle in Lin’an (Hangzhou) in 1127, where it was to remain for more than a century. Divorced from their imperial kilns and keen to establish themselves as the undisputed center of Chinese civilization, the emperors of the nascent Southern Song clung to the aesthetics of their predecessors and founded new official (guan) kilns to imitate their beloved Ru.

While the forms and textures of the new guan wares may have been inspired by those of Ru and other Northern wares, before long, Southern guan ware had developed into its own established artform. Suffused with rich networks of crackle caused by the cooling glaze, guan ware is celebrated for its atmospheric subtlety and refined tactile presence. Although perhaps initially produced accidentally, potters soon deliberately sought to reproduce this enchanting crackle, applying multiple layers of glaze that, when fired and cooled, would enliven the surface with crazing reminiscent of veins in jade or frost on stone. When the glaze thinned at the rim or foot, the iron-rich dark stoneware body appeared as a 'purple mouth and iron foot,' a hallmark look prized by court collectors as part of the ware’s introspective beauty, while its rich unctuous glaze proved as enchanting to hold as it was to look upon.

In a similar departure from its northern predecessors, guan ware also displays a remarkable level of variation and lack of restraint in its forms and colors. From rich silvery greens to warm cream tones and dark grey cobweb-like crazing, each piece of guan ware in the Palace collections and beyond is a unique work of art. Even among related hexalobed dishes of this form, for example, a wide variation exists. From those fired on firing spurs to those fired directly on their rim; guan dishes of this design were produced in series of varying colors and sizes (from ca. 18.7 cm to 23 cm), seemingly at the whims of their ancient craftsmen who – unlike their Ru predecessors – had the task of producing imperial wares thrust upon them without the generations of developed practice.

This variation, while lending each piece a unique quality, has also led to some questions as to the attribution and dating of guan ware. With a thick celadon glaze suffused with crackles, guan was often compared by Ming scholars with a related Ge (‘older brother’) ware attributed to the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). Produced at least one of the same kiln sites as guan (Laohudong) in the Yuan dynasty, the question of how Ge wares are distinguished from guan remains pernicious. In the fourteenth century Gegu yaolun (Important discussions about assessing antiques), for example, scholar Cao Zhao cites Ge and guan wares as distinct but describes both as of an uneven celadon tone with ‘purple mouth’ and ‘iron foot’, distinguishing guan for its slightly pinker glaze and Ge for its more coarse clay body and ‘weaker’ color. This color distinction, relied on by scholars until today may, however, be more a case of a piece’s positioning in the kiln than anything systematic. 

This mystery is only further compounded by the importance placed on guan wares in the ensuing centuries. Preserved in court collections and uncovered in archaeological contexts, the discovery of guan pieces in later contexts illustrates the continued esteem in which they were held, even long after the Southern Song. A group of twelve dishes unearthed from the early Ming tomb of official Wang Xingzu (1338–1371) outside Zhonghua Gate, Nanjing, for example, shows forms and glaze characteristics almost indistinguishable from canonical guan wares and the present dish. With a rich celadon color, subtle crackle and dark stoneware body that reveals itself at rims and feet, consistent with Southern Song guan excavated in Hangzhou contexts, the Wang Xingzu dishes (now preserved between the Nanjing Museum and Palace Museum, Beijing), while variously attributed to the Yuan dynasty, may well be products of the Southern Song, passed into elite collections and even burial contexts well into the Ming period.

By the Qing dynasty, the primacy of guan ware was unquestionable. Preserved in great number in the imperial collections, guan wares – and specifically dishes of this design – appear prominently in catalogues of the imperial collections. Compare four hexalobed dishes of related form depicted in the 1728 catalogue of the collection of the Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1723-1735), the Guwan tu (Pictures of Ancient Playthings), preserved in the British Museum, London (accession no. PDF,X.01) (Fig. 1) and another four in the 1729 volume at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (accession no. E.59-1911). Yongzheng’s successor, the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-1795) was a particularly ardent admirer of guan. Of the hundred and ninety-nine recorded poems composed by the Emperor in praise of ceramics, more than a third (seventy) are in praise of his beloved guan wares and six of these are still found on vessels preserved in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing; see Gao Xiaoran, ‘Qianlong yuzhi shi ciqi kaolun / Studies of Ceramics with Inscriptions of “Imperial Poems” Composed by Emperor Qianlong’, Gugong Xuekan, 2011, pp 294-309. 

Certainly one reason for this imperial esteem is guan ware’s exceptional rarity. Today just thirty closely related dishes are preserved from the Qing court in the National Palace Museum, Taipei and six in the Palace Museum, Beijing, generally catalogued as Ge ware but attributed to the Southern Song dynasty in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Porcelain of the Song Dynasty, vol. 2, Beijing, 1996, pls 74, 78, 82, 84, 85, 91. While the Taipei examples similarly have been variously attributed as ‘Song’, ‘Song - Yuan’ or ‘Yuan’ since their first major exhibition in 1989 (Song Guan yao tezhan / Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Sung Dynasty Kuan Ware, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1989), the splendor and enchanting quality of these dishes has remained undeniable. With six simple notches carved into the rim and a gently fluted form rising from a crisp delicate foot, the dish is rendered like a blossom floating on the surface of the water, inviting the beholder to touch.

Beyond the Palace collections, surviving examples of related form are exceedingly rare. Compare a closely related dish with a metal-bound rim preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (accession no. 24.172.1), in Suzanne Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1975, pl. 61 (Fig. 2); seven from the collection of Sir Percival David in the British Museum, London, illustrated in Stacey Pierson, Illustrated catalogue of Ru, Guan, Jun, Guangdong and Yixing wares in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London, 1999, cat. nos 13, 14, A32, 28, 56, 89 and A39, the first three with Qianlong inscriptions and others likely with Qing court provenance (Fig. 3); two from the collection of Sir Harry Garner: one broken and preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (accession no. C.6-1978) in Basil Gray, Sung Porcelain and Stoneware, London, 1984, pl 103; and the other most recently sold in our Hong Kong rooms as part of the Ise Collection, 9th September 2025, lot 5022 (Fig. 4); and another from the Junkunc Collection, sold more recently in our Hong Kong rooms, 4th April 2017, lot 1106 (Fig. 5).