A fine carved 'Lotus' hexafoil Ding bowl, northern Song Dynasty (960 - 1127) Elegantly potted bowl with thin, slightly rounded sides, fluidly carved on the interior with a lotus blossom and leaves, covered inside and outside with a lustrous, pale ivory-toned glaze. Traces of a customs mark on the base. Extremely fine hairline crack on the wall. Otherwise intact. No chips or additions. Very rare specimen. Diameter 18 cm, height 4.4 cm.Ding bowls were favoured by esteemed literati in the Song Dynasty for their luminous white glaze, which created an attractive contrast especially with tea colour. Su Shi, who was appointed Governor of Dingzhou, the state where the Ding kilns were located, wrote a poem on Ding white porcelain in 1093. Being a well-respected connoisseur and artist, Su Shi’s praise undoubtedly solidified the status of Ding porcelain amongst subsequent connoisseurs. The Jin-dynasty scholar Liu Qi (1203 - 1259), for example, wrote in his poem: "Dingzhou huaciou, yanse tianxia bai" (decorated porcelain bowls from Dingzhou have the best white colour under Heaven).A similar bowl, formerly in the Oppenheim Collection and now in the British Museum, is illustrated in "The World's Great Collections: Oriental Ceramics", vol. 5., pl. 20. Another related example, illustrated in "Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection", Japan, 1987, no. 413, was sold at Christie's "Hong Kong", 1 December 2009, lot 1863. Cf. also Christie's "Hong Kong", 26th November 2018, lot 8005. A hexafoil bowl of similar form and size but with lotus carved in a slightly different style, dating to the Jin dynasty, is in the Beijing Palace Museum Collection, illustrated in "Zhongguo taoci quanji – Dingyao", Shanghai, 1981, pl. 90. Compare also to a Ding bowl of similar shape, but carved with different floral motifs featuring curling foliage, formerly in the Mrs. Alfred Clark and J. T. Tai collections, sold at Sotheby's New York, 22 March 2011, lot 167.Provenance: From a private collection in Bavaria.Condition: II