A rare Chinese yellow-glazed marbled pottery tripod dish, Tang dynasty,...

A rare Chinese yellow-glazed marbled pottery tripod dish, Tang dynasty, the white and reddish-brown pottery shallow dish has a flattened everted rim raised on three plain pottery feet and is covered in a translucent yellow glaze which partially covers the underside, 13.3cm diameter Provenance: Ben Janssens Oriental Art, London, 2003 Note: Marbling, or jiao tai ('mixed clay'), was a popular decoration technique on ceramics of the Tang dynasty. Although formerly thought to be derived from the tixi multi-colored lacquer tradition, recent scholarship finds the inspiration to have more likely come from marbelized glasswares of the ancient Near East. Such pieces have been found in excavations as far as Afghanistan and Korea. Evidentally Tang potters of the early 8th century adapted this technique to pottery, creating the world's earliest form of marbelized ceramics. For further discussion, refer to Wu Tung, Earth Transformed: Chinese Ceramics in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2001, p. 39. A very similar tripod dish was sold at Christie's London, 3 November 2009, lot 188