An important and exceptionally carved cinnabar lacquer 'lotus' dish,14th century, Yang Mao mark十四世紀 剔紅荷塘圖盤 《楊茂造》款of circular form, the interior superbly carved through thick and lustrous layers of red lacquer with three large lotus blooms wreathed in broad furled leaves, sprays of arrowhead and begonia, the exterior sides masterfully and deeply carved through red, black and yellow lacquer with a broad classic scroll, the base lacquered black and incised with the inscription Yang Mao zao ('made by Yang Mao'), Japanese wood boxes28 cm来源: Nishi Hongan-ji, Kyoto. Otani Family Collection, Kyoto.Otani-ke (Honpa Hongan-ji) kyū Gozōhin nyūsatsu daisankai [Auction of the Ancient Otani Family Collection (Honpa Hongan-ji), third session], Nishi Hongan-ji, Kyoto, 6th/7th May 1913, item no. 2005. A Japanese private collection, Tokyo.Christie's Hong Kong, 29th November 2005, lot 1529 and cover.西本願寺，京都大谷家族收藏，京都《大谷家（本派本願寺）旧御蔵品入札第三回》，西本願寺，京都，1913年5月6/7日，編號2005日本私人收藏，東京香港佳士得2005年11月29日，編號1529及封面文学: Christie’s 20 Years in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2006, p. 299.《香港佳士得二十週年回顧》，香港，2006年，頁299拍品专文: Water Plants in Motion Regina KrahlThis sumptuous cinnabar lacquer dish with its unusual large-scale motif of lotus and arrowhead plants is remarkable for its dramatic layout dominated by swirling elements, and particularly desirable because of its illustrious provenance.China’s carved lacquer manufacture appears to have started late in the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) and matured through the Yuan (1279-1368) into the early Ming period (1368-1644). Fixed points for dating are rare prior to the use of imperial reign marks in the Yongle period (1403-1424). Song lacquer carved with representational designs (rather than formal, abstract motifs only) is documented through pieces in the Engaku-ji, a Buddhist temple in Kamakura, which are recorded to have been brought to Japan by a monk before the fall of the Song dynasty (Sō Gen no bi. Denrai no shikki to chūshin ni/The Colors and Forms of Song and Yuan China. Featuring Lacquerwares, Ceramics, and Metalwares, Nezu Institute of Fine Arts, Tokyo, 2004, nos 80 and 92). Almost no early carved lacquer pieces have been excavated, the best known probably being a small Yuan dynasty box and cover depicting the poet Tao Yuanming in a garden from the Ren family tombs, now in the Shanghai Museum (Zhongguo qiqi quanji [Complete series on Chinese lacquer], vol. 4, Fuzhou, 1998, pl. 155).According to the collectors’ handbook Ge gu yao lun, composed in 1388 by Cao Zhao, two craftsmen active at the end of the Yuan dynasty, Zhang Cheng and Yang Mao, were famous for their carved red lacquer ware (Sir Percival David, Chinese Connoisseurship: The Ko Ku Yao Lun: The Essential Criteria of Antiquities, London, 1971, p. 146, Chinese p. 303, folio 42a). Their names are found on several lacquer pieces, inscribed in thin incised strokes, followed by the term zao (‘made’), like on the present dish, but nothing is otherwise known about these two lacquer carvers. At least four lacquer pieces thus inscribed and attributed to the Yuan period are in the Palace Museum, Beijing, see Gugong jingdian. Gugong qiqi tudian/Classics of the Forbidden City. Lacquerware in the Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, 2012, pls 1-4, among them one dish also carved with an overall flower design inside, but depicting gardenia, and a classic scroll on the outside. In the early period, black carved lacquer ware still appears to have been more common than red, but cinnabar lacquer became the prevalent type in the Ming dynasty; see Chūgoku Sō jidai no chōshitsu/Chinese Carved Lacquerworks of the Song Dynasty, Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, 2004.The repertoire of the early lacquer carvers comprised a wide range of different flower designs, but it is very rare to find lotus plants depicted in such bold, naturalistic manner and even more unusual is the depiction of large arrowhead plants. The three lush lotus blooms are subtly differentiated, depicted in different phases of maturity, from being in full bloom to developing seed pods, and the three leaves are equally shown in different stages of curling up. The arrowhead, sagittaria sagittifolia, a water plant often accompanying the lotus in Chinese designs, but mostly as a minor supporting motif, is here rendered in its full glory with both its long linear and its eponymous arrowhead-shaped leaves, which grow side by side, and even with delicate flowering stems, which are otherwise rarely seen. Only one very similar dish, slightly larger and carved with flower motifs also on the outside, appears to be recorded, in the Tokyo National Museum, included in the exhibition Chōshitsu/Carved Lacquer, The Tokugawa Art Museum and Nezu Institute of Fine Arts, Nagoya and Tokyo, 1984, cat. no. 76 (fig. 1).In its bold and vigorous carving style, our dish is comparable to another exceptional early lacquer dish in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from the Irving collection, illustrated in James C.Y. Watt and Barbara Brennan Ford, East Asian Lacquer. The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1991, pl. 19, and on the dust jacket (fig. 2). That dish, slightly larger in size, shows a very different motif – birds among hollyhock plants – but the artist drafting the layout composed the design in a similar way: large-scale motif elements are harmoniously distributed over the available space and lesser features in between – in that case the birds’ long tail feathers, in our case the slender arrowhead leaves – are employed to bring an otherwise static design to life, thus creating a dynamic impression of nature in motion. The Metropolitan dish is inscribed Zhang Cheng zao, and although the authors have dated it ‘Yuan to early Ming period, 14th century’, they state that they consider a late Yuan date ‘plausible’. Like the present dish, that dish appears to be in remarkably good condition.Watt and Ford, who mention that most pieces of this type are preserved in Japan, are linking the Irving dish to a group of pieces included in the exhibition Chōshitsu, op.cit., cat. nos. 37-40 and 42: four circular dishes carved with a similar classic scroll around the outside, and a massive tray with mallow-petal rim and a floral design outside. Three of these dishes are also signed Zhang Cheng, one registered in Japan as Important Cultural Property; one dish and the tray are carved with a related design of lotus and arrowhead plants, but incorporating two ducks. Another dish with this latter motif is in the Shandong Provincial Museum, Jinan, illustrated in Huang Diqi and Dai Guangpin, eds, Zhongguo qiqi jinghua [Essence of Chinese lacquerware], Fuzhou, 2003, pl. 187, where it is attributed to the early Ming dynasty.A smaller (21 cm) dish in the Palace Museum, Beijing, handed down from the Qing court collection, carved with narcissus is also reminiscent of our dish on account of the rhythmic vortical motion of the slender narcissus leaves, which is even more accentuated on that piece, since the narcissus blooms are so much smaller than the lotus blooms and leaves here (fig. 3). The Gugong dish bears a spurious Qianlong reign mark and has been attributed to the Yuan dynasty in Zhongguo qiqi quanji [Complete series on Chinese lacquer], vol. 4, Fuzhou, 1998, pl. 158 (where it appears with a wrong image of the reverse), and to the early Ming dynasty, but placed immediately after the lacquer wares of the Yuan dynasty, in Gugong jingdian, op.cit., 2012, pl. 10, where its scroll border on the reverse can be seen and where it was also chosen to illustrate the cover.In contrast to these pieces, compare also a Yongle version of this lotus-and-arrowhead design on another smaller dish in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, included in Hai-wai yi-chen/Chinese Art in Overseas Collections. Lacquerware, Taipei, 1987, pl. 76.Nishi (West) and Higashi (East) Hongan-ji, two of Japan’s most important temples in Kyoto, are the head temples of the Jōdo Shin (True Pure Land) sect that had been founded by the Buddhist priest Shinran in the 13th century. In 1591, the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi granted the sect land in Kyoto to build their main temple. Nishi Hongan-ji, built before its eastern twin, is one of the major Buddhist temples of Japan and a Unesco World Heritage Site (fig. 4). As descendants of Shinran, the Otani family by tradition is providing the hereditary head priests of Nishi Hongan-ji. In 1913, Count Ōtani Kozui (1876-1948), better known for having organized expeditions to explore Buddhist cave temples in Central Asia, was 22nd Chief Abbot of the temple. In 1913 the impoverished sect sold many of its ancient works of art to cover debts.In 1388 Cao Zhao wrote in his collectors’ handbook Ge gu yao lun, that carved red lacquer is greatly favoured by the peoples of Japan (Sir Percival David, loc.cit.). Harry M. Garner states that although there were little official contacts between China and Japan during the Song and Yuan dynasties and right until the end of the fourteenth century, “the continuing contacts between the Buddhists [sic] priests in the two countries must have allowed a great deal of Chinese lacquer to be sent to Japan.” As proof he refers to a catalogue of works of art in the collection of the Hōjō regents of Kamakura, compiled in 1363 by a priest from the Engaku-ji, which describes round and square trays, bowls, incense boxes, tea caddies and tiered food boxes of carved red lacquer (“The Export of Chinese Lacquer to Japan in the Yüan and Early Ming Dynasties”, Archives of Asian Art, no. XXV, 1971-2, pp. 7-8). While Engaku-ji in Kamakura still holds the earliest clearly datable pieces of Chinese carved lacquer ware (see above), early Chinese lacquer works have survived in many Japanese temples, mostly unpublished until modern times. For its exhibition of Song and Yuan lacquer wares Sō Gen no bi (op.cit.) in 2004 the Nezu Institute of Fine Arts, for example, borrowed works from the Tsurugaoka-Hachiman-gū, also in Kamakura, the Kōdai-ji and the Shōden-Eigen-in, both in Kyoto, the Tōun-in in Aichi, the Seishū-ji in Nagoya, the Daijō-ji in Kanazawa, and the Daiju-ji in Okazaki. Many of these pieces may have been acquired from China when they were still practically new, and the same could be true for Chinese works of art handed down in the Jōdo Shin sect, even if their head temple, Nishi Hongan-ji in Kyoto, was built later.豐荷搖曳戲茨菰康蕊君 剔紅漆盤，滿綴塘荷茨菰，豐美蔥鬱，巧妙運用迴旋線條，構圖別具張力，生意盎然。本品流傳歷史清晰悠長，珍貴非凡。中國雕漆工藝始於南宋，元至明初已臻精熟。明永樂朝甫始年款，此前漆作難以精確斷代。宋雕漆多見寫實風格題材（非抽象紋飾），可參考鐮倉圓覺寺藏品，乃宋時日本僧人攜回，《宋元の美—伝來の漆器を中心に》，根津美術館，東京，2004年，編號80、92。出土幾無見早期雕漆，最為知名或為任氏墓出土元代淵明賞菊小蓋盒，現貯上海博物館，《中國漆器全集》，卷4，福州，1998年，圖版155。1388年曹昭《格古要論》記載，元末二位剔紅名匠，張成、楊茂，見大維德爵士，《Chinese Connoisseurship: The Ko Ku Yao Lun: The Essential Criteria of Antiquities》，倫敦，1971年，頁146，中文，頁303，編號42a。張成、楊茂之名，可見於部分漆作，多以細線刻之，並銘「造」字，如同本品。此外，張楊二人無見載錄。北京故宮博物院藏至少四件帶款元代漆器，見《故宮經典：故宮漆器圖典》，北京，2012年，圖版1-4，其中一例盤內滿飾梔子花紋，外壁卷草紋。早期漆雕多見黑漆，明代則以朱漆為盛，參考《中国宋時代の彫漆》，東京國立博物館，東京，2004年。早期雕漆中，花卉題材甚廣，然罕有如此大膽、寫實之風格，亦極少如此大面積的茨菰紋飾。三朵嬌荷，各自不同，以細微差異描寫不同階段，或盛放、或蓮蓬結實，相應的三片荷葉，亦以葉面捲曲程度，展現自然，生生不息。茨菰，水草也，中國藝術中常見其相伴荷花紋飾，多為配角，本品茨菰紋飾，挺拔大方，三角箭頭形葉面描寫細膩，間綴串串花蕊，生意盎然，珍稀罕見。現知僅一相類漆盤，尺寸略大，外壁雕飾花卉紋，藏於東京國立博物館，展出於《彫漆》，德川美術館及根津美術館，名古屋及東京，1984年，編號 76（圖一）。此盤之雕漆風格，酣暢有力，氣韻生動，可對比紐約大都會藝術博物館藏一例早期雕漆盤，出自歐雲舊藏，出版於屈志仁與 Barbara Brennan Ford，《East Asian Lacquer. The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection》，大都會藝術博物館，紐約，1991年，圖版 19，及護封摺頁（圖二）。大都會博物館藏盤，尺寸稍大，雕飛鳥穿梭蜀葵之間，構圖風格與本品相似：飛鳥、蜀葵花為主紋飾，疏朗佈局於盤面，間綴次要紋飾，花苞、葉紋、枝梗等，雙鳥尾羽纖長，一如本品之茨菰紋，其優雅曲線賦予整體紋飾自然動感，生動如真。大都會博物館藏品，銘「張成造」款，專著中雖斷其年代為「元至明初，十四世紀」，作者論及應屬元代晚期之作，此盤品項極佳，與本品一同。文中，屈氏及 Ford 述此盤應與《彫漆》展覽中的一類漆盤相關，多數作例皆藏於日本，前述出處，編號 37-40、42，其中四件圓盤外壁雕卷草紋，與本品相類，另一例大型葵瓣式口沿托盤，外壁雕花卉紋。三盤銘「張成」款，一為日本重要文化財，另一盤與托盤則雕荷塘茨菰紋，並綴二禽。類同紋式者還有一例，藏於濟南山東省博物館，刊載於黃迪杞、戴光品編，《中國漆器精華》，福州，2003年，圖版187，斷此盤為早明之作。清宮舊藏一件水仙花紋漆盤，尺寸較小（21 公分），現為北京故宮博物院藏品，巧妙運用水仙葉片瘦長之線條，營造迴旋式構圖，一如本品風格，水仙花細緻小巧，點綴其上，更加突顯畫面律動感（圖三），銘乾隆年款，應屬後加，一說斷代為元，見《中國漆器全集》，卷 4，福州，1998年，圖版158（背面圖錯植），另一則斷為早明，緊接於元代漆作之後，見《故宮經典》，前述出處，圖版 10，此處並刊載盤背卷草紋，且為封面。對比一件永樂朝剔紅荷塘茨菰紋盤，尺寸較小，藏於堪薩斯城納爾遜藝術博物館，錄於《海外遺珍》，台北，1987 年，圖版 76。西、東本願寺，乃日本京都最重要的佛寺，為十三世紀親鸞和尚創立淨土真宗之本山。1591年，豐臣秀吉支持下遷址至今處。西本願寺造於東寺之前，乃日本重要寺院之一，亦為聯合國文教組織登錄之世界文化遺產（圖四）。親鸞和尚後人，大谷一族，代代出任西本願寺住持，曾組探險隊前往中亞佛窟之大谷光瑞伯爵（1876-1948年），1913年繼任第二十二代法主，同年，因財務困頓，西本願寺出售許多珍藏藝術品，以償債務。1388年曹昭《格古要論》曾提及日本極愛剔紅（大維德爵士，前述出處），迦納爵士亦述，宋元時期直至十四世紀末，中日之間雖極少正式往來，「兩世紀間，佛教僧人間的交流卻無間斷，遂使許多中國漆器流入日本」。迦納爵士以1363年圓覺寺僧人為鐮倉的北条家族整理之藝術品清單為例，其中載錄各式剔紅漆器，圓、方托盤、盌、香盒、茶入、層盒等，〈The Export of Chinese Lacquer to Japan in the Yüan and Early Ming Dynasties〉，《Archives of Asian Art》，編號 XXV，1971-2 年，頁7-8。圓覺寺至今仍藏有前述年代可溯之早期雕漆，許多其他日本寺院亦同，惟未曾出版。以2004年根津美術館《宋元の美》為例，前述出處，其展品借自：鐮倉鶴岡八幡宮、京都高台寺、正傳永源院、愛知縣洞雲院、名古屋政秀寺、金澤大乘寺、岡崎大樹寺。許多藏品自中國傳入時仍是嶄新，歷代悉心保存至今，淨土宗藏中國藝術品或亦同，即使本山西本願寺為後建。展出: Ishikawa Prefecture Museum of Art, Kanazawa.石川縣立美術館，金澤