Small Dish with Foliated Rim and with Chrysanthemum, Geometric, and Stylized-Wave Décor

The concave walls of this small dish rise from the broad, flat floor to the bracketed lip, which terminates in a raised edge with eight points. A stylized chrysanthemum blossom embellishes the vessel’s floor, set in a circular medallion and enclosed within the wide band of symmetrically disposed, geometric strapwork that enlivens the cavetto’s concave walls. Facing each other across the dish, two "taotie" masks interrupt the cavetto’s strapwork. Representing stylized waves, short, opposing bands of hatching, each arranged in a triangular configuration, decorate the everted lip. The dish rests on a low, wide, circular footring. Thin and transparent, the lead-fluxed, emerald-green glaze that covers the interior of the dish coats only the upper half of the undecorated exterior, leaving the base, footring, and lower half of the exterior unglazed. The kilns where this dish was produced have not yet been discovered, so its date and place of manufacture remain uncertain. Concurring that such ceramics reflect Chinese aesthetic canons but were made for the Southeast Asian market, scholars nonetheless disagree on the location where such ceramics were made, some ascribing them to Vietnam, others to southeastern China (i.e., from southern Fujian to Guangdong to Guangxi province). They also disagree about the dating of such pieces, some assigning them to the seventeenth century, others to the eighteenth or nineteenth. The form and glaze color of this dish distantly recall the celadon-glazed chargers with barbed rims and raised edges produced at the Longquan kilns, Zhejiang province, during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368). The form also echoes that of blue-and-white porcelain chargers produced at Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, in the mid-fourteenth century, such as the Harvard Art Museums’ Charger with Foliate Rim and Peacock Decoration (1961.112). Doubtless inspired by geometric decoration on Yuan- and Ming-dynasty carved lacquers and on so-called later Chinese bronzes—those produced from the Song dynasty (960-1279) onward—this dish’s strapwork decoration finds distant kinship in the decorative schemes of ceramics produced at the Putian kilns, in Fujian province, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The debased "taotie" masks that interrupt the strapwork find close parallels among the masks on bronze vessels cast during the Ming and Qing dynasties. A typical motif of Chinese ceramic decoration, the chrysanthemum symbolizes both autumn and literary pursuits. Stylized waves of the type that enliven this dish’s lip—waves comprising a series of concentric arcs—had become a staple border motif in blue-and-white porcelain chargers produced at Jingdezhen by the mid-fourteenth century. This dish was created through the use of a hump, or single-faced, mold—a hollow mound of fired stoneware that was placed at the center of the potter’s wheel. As the potter pressed prepared clay against the mold on the rotating wheel, the mold shaped the vessel’s interior and imparted its relief decoration, while the potter’s hands shaped the vessel’s exterior and regulated the thickness of its walls. Although Chinese potters began the widespread use of lead-fluxed glazes during the Eastern Han period (25–220), such low-firing lead glazes enjoyed their greatest popularity during the Tang dynasty (618-907). Lead glazes generally fell from favor after the mid-eighth century but enjoyed a revival in the late Ming and Qing periods, just as they also found favor in Vietnam from the thirteenth century onward. Such Vietnamese pieces typically mimic the forms and decorative schemes of Chinese stonewares and porcelains that were not originally coated with lead glazes. The unusual Calderwood dish likely falls into this category of wares.