Part B.
Last month, a small white ceramic bowl carved with a pattern of lotus
blossoms sold for more than 2.2 million dollars at an auction in New York.
That price was more than 700,000 times 46 the sellers had paid for it.
The consignors bought the bowl for a few dollars at a yard sale in 2007.
It was displayed in their home until they 47 Asian art experts and
discovered that it was a thousand- year-old artifact from the Northern Song
dynasty in China. If it’s curious that this bowl escaped notice for so long, it’s
an equal 48 that it came to light. Nothing signaled its age or rarity to
the untutored eye.
49 so vital an article was overlooked led Ms. Wiggers, director and
chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon, to
organize an exhibition devoted to it. She posits the bowl has been overlooked
partly because it’s an accessory. “When I talk to people about the bowl, it is
always about something else,” Ms. Wiggers said. “It’s a metaphorical
conversation about ritual, like in the tea ceremony, or about the fabrication
process. It’s very hard to just talk about the bowl itself. We talk around the
bowl.”
50 , it’s the bowl’s lack of presence that makes it such an excellent
metaphor and accounts for the many memorable references to it in literature.
【題組】46. (A)that (B) when (C) what (D) which