Covered bowl

The elegant form of this covered bowl can be traced back to Song dynasty porcelain bowls whose cleanly shaped foot rings simultaneously provided both a visual lift to the piece and an angular counterpoint to the fluid profile. Unlike ceramic bowls, whose rounded lips either tapered or were bound with metal, these jade versions are punctuated by a beveled edge, which highlights the artisan's control over the hard stone. As is typical for covered bowls of this type, the shallow lid sits inside the flared lip of the deeper bowl and is itself surmounted by a small foot ring so that it too may be used as a bowl when inverted.

Like their porcelain prototypes, these vessels have thin sides that exploit the translucence of the material. This commonality between jade and porcelain may help explain the popularity of jade skeuomorphs (decorative versions) of porcelain pieces that began to appear in the eighteenth century once jade supplies were plentiful enough to support the production of vessels. For a slightly smaller imperial example of the same form with bands of surface decoration, see cat. no. 106