Sky-Blue-Glazed Brush Washer with Twin Pigeons and Auspicious Coin Motif

"The blue of the sky where the clouds break after rain." That's how legend says a Song emperor described the colour he wanted for his porcelain. Potters called it tianqing, sky blue, and Ru ware became its most famous answer.

This brush washer carries that soft grey-blue glaze, with a fine "cicada-wing" crackle across the surface. In the centre, two birds with outspread wings face each other, holding between them an old round coin with a square hole. The motif is called "auspicious birds presenting treasure": the pair stands for harmony and double happiness, the coin for wealth. And the round coin with its square hole echoes the ancient idea of round heaven and square earth.

A scholar rinsed his brushes in a washer like this between strokes of calligraphy. It is 17.5 cm across and only 4.5 cm high. The base is fully glazed and shows five tiny "sesame-seed" spur marks from where it rested in the kiln.

Attributed to Ru ware, Song dynasty.

The vessel is of an open form with gently curved sides and a raised foot ring, representing a classic brush-washer form of the Song dynasty. Intended for rinsing brushes, such vessels could also serve as display dishes or trays for the presentation of tea.

The entire vessel is covered in Ru ware’s characteristic sky-blue (tianqing) glaze, its surface traversed by a natural network of fine ice-crackle crazing, traditionally described as “cicada-wing” crackle. The central decoration is executed in moulded and applied relief, giving the motifs a pronounced three-dimensional quality.

The glaze evokes the celebrated Ru ware aesthetic of “the blue of the sky after rain,” with a subtle greyish-blue tone, a warm jade-like lustre, and a substantial glaze layer whose restrained sheen enhances the vessel’s quiet elegance.

The centre of the dish is decorated with a pair of pigeons, or phoenix-like birds, carrying an auspicious coin. The two birds are symmetrically arranged in flight around a central relief of a round coin with a square aperture, modelled after an ancient Chinese cash coin. The paired birds symbolise peace, auspiciousness, prosperity, and good fortune, while their pairing also conveys the auspicious notion of “double happiness.”

The round coin represents wealth and financial prosperity, while its square aperture embodies the traditional cosmological concept of “a round Heaven and a square Earth” (tianyuan difang). When inscribed with characters such as “Taiping” (太平, Great Peace), such coins are traditionally known as Taiping (“Peace”) coins. The combined imagery thus conveys wishes for peace and prosperity, abundance and good fortune, and is traditionally described as “Two Pigeons Presenting the Treasure” or “Auspicious Birds Presenting the Treasure.”

The base exhibits the characteristic fully glazed firing-support technique associated with Ru ware, with five small, sesame-seed-shaped spur marks visible at the centre. The minute firing spurs left behind traces of the pale, incense-ash-coloured porcelain body. In this technique, the vessel was fully glazed, including the foot, and supported only by fine spurs during firing. After firing, the spurs were removed, leaving the exceptionally small marks that have become one of the defining technical features of Ru ware. Northern Song Ru official wares commonly bear three or five spur marks; this example retains five.

The glaze on the base is likewise traversed by a natural network of fine crackle, forming an interlacing pattern often described as “crab-claw” crackle. The sky-blue tone continues across the underside, while the glaze retains the warm, subdued lustre characteristic of Ru ware. The foot ring is shallow, with its outer wall tapering slightly inward. The foot edge remains fully glazed without any exposed porcelain body, confirming the fully glazed construction of the vessel.