TANG DYNASTY (AD 618-907)

Several silver cups of this elegant shape, similarly decorated on each lobe with various birds in flight amidst plants, have been published. One in the Hakutsuru Art Museum, Kobe, Japan, is illustrated by B. Gyllensvärd, 'T'ang Gold and Silver', B.M.F.EA., No. 29, Stockholm, 1957, pl. 4b. Another from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, and previously in the David Weill Collection, was sold at Christie's New York, 1 December 1994, lot 65. One is illustrated in Tangdai jin yin qi, Zhejiang Municipal Museum and Shaanxi Provincial Museum, 1985, figs. 7 and 8; and another was included in the exhibition, Masterpieces of Chinese Art From the Art Institute of Chicago, Osaka, Japan, Museum of Oriental Ceramics, 1989, no. 25. Two gilt-bronze examples have also been published: one in the collection of Dr. Pierre Uldry, Chinesisches Gold und Silber, Zurich, 1994, p. 151, no. 136; the other in the St. Louis Art Museum, by Clarence W. Kelley, Chinese Gold & Silver in American Collections, The Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio, 1984, p. 54, no. 20. The decoration on all of these cups is highly formal in its symmetry.