Bowl

Item number Edz1048 from the MOA: University of British Columbia.

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Data
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Description

Steep-sided bowl with blue decoration on a grey ground. Interior has a small rectangle at centre and two bands at bottom of sides; exterior has 120 degree area with line and blotch pattern, one small empty circle, and on character.

History Of Use

Such bowls were used by individual family members to hold rice while eating. For Hakka people, they were also used in the ceremony held to install the soul of a deceased family in the tablet representing ancestors in the lineage ancestral hall. If the deceased family member was more than sixty years of age, the bowls used in this ceremony were considered to carry good fortune and were used thereafter as rice bowls for the children in the family.

Iconographic Meaning

If such bowls had been used in the ceremony to install the soul of a deceased family member who had died at more than sixty years of age in the tablet in the lineage ancestral hall, they represented long life, and were called 100 years of life bowls.

Narrative

This bowl was purchased from a shop that sold second-hand good and antiques in Macau. Mrs. Yau Chan, Shek-ying of Kwan Mun Hau Village, Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong, explained its use and symbolism. This bowl may have been made in the well-known kilns in Wun Yu, Tai Po, Hong Kong.