JIN/YUAN DYNASTY, 13TH-14TH CENTURY

This meiping is of a type commonly used to hold wine and is decorated using a technique employed at several kilns in north China. The technique of fully glazing the vessels and then cutting away or incising the design through the glaze before firing produced a dramatic design. Such designs owed their impact not only to the contrast between the pale color of the revealed body material and the rich dark brown of the glaze, but to the contrast between the slightly rough matte texture of the body and the silky gloss of the glaze. Vessels decorated using this technique were made at several kilns producing ceramics in the Cizhou style in Henan and Shanxi provinces.

A very similar Cizhou meiping carved with similar decoration from the George Eumorfopoulos Collection is illustrated by R. L. Hobson, et al., The Romance of Chinese Art, New York, 1936, no. 12. Two other similar Cizhou meiping are illustrated in Black Porcelain from the Mrs. & Mrs. Yeung Wing Tak Collection, Guangzhou, 1997, nos. 19 and 20.