Bowl with incised decoration depicting parrots (top and side views)

The irregular marks that can be seen at the bottom of this piece, always a reddish color surrounding a rounded gray area, result from the removal of rounded spurs after firing. They constitute a distinctive feature of yue celadon. As precious animals and birds from foreign countries flooded into China during the Tang dynasty, yue potters used parrots as a decorative motif, a design that would only persist for a short time during the tenth century (KGXB 1959.3: 116-7; WW 1963.1: 44). Here, two incised parrots face each other on the bowl's interior. Although this bowl does not illustrate the best of yue glazes, it nonetheless is among very few known specimens that display the parrot motif.