Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

The bowl is heavily potted, with rounded sides and a thick, slightly tapering foot. The inside is faintly impressed with a floral medallion, with the characters shi lin (stone forest) inscribed in the middle, and surrounded by an incised flower-head with six spiralling petals, with double and triple outlines, the inner walls being plain. The outside is simply incised with vertical strokes with a lobed line on top, to suggest a rudimentary petal design, which leaves the lowest part plain. The light yellowish-green glaze covers most of the footring but leaves a broad ring on the base free, where the biscuit has fired a yellowish-brown. The firing support, which stuck to a thick drop of glaze, had to be removed by force.

The significance of the inscription is not completely clear. The same characters appear on several Longquan celadon dishes of the same period in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul (Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, ed. John Ayers, London, 1986, vol.1, nos.391 and 404). Shilin is recorded as a pen name, a place name, and also the name of a famous garden in Wuxing, Zhejiang province, close to Lake Tai.