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Lot Essay
Cizhou wares, more commonly known for their carved or painted creamy-white and brown slip decoration, were occasionally also covered with a green lead glaze. Both these rare green-glazed wares, together with the Cizhou wares of related forms with creamy-white and brown slip decoration only, appear to have been produced at the Guantai kilns, as a number of fragmentary finds attest. See, for example, Guantai Cizhou Yaozhi (The Cizhou Kiln Site at Guantai), Beijing, 1997, col. pl. 9, fig. 2; pl. 13, fig. 3 center; pl. 23, figs. 1 and 2; pl. 70, fig. 1; p. 123, fig. 52 (1 and 4); p. 127, fig. 54 (2).
Green glaze was reserved primarily for use on the more prestigious vessels, in particular vases with trumpet-shaped mouth and high-shouldered body tapering sharply to a flared foot, and the most frequently depicted motif was the peony. A green-glazed vase closely related to the current example, with a similar design of carved peony and scrolling leaves, but with a lipped mouth above the everted rim, is illustrated by Hasebe Gakuji, Toki Zenshu, 13, So no Jishuyo (Ceramics Anthology, 13, Song Cizhou ware), Tokyo, 1958, no. 46. Another green-glazed vase of related form and carved with peony, but with the blossoms rendered in white slip, was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 November 2016, lot 3387.
An incised meiping in the British Museum, of larger size and with a more dense and regular design of white-slip flowers against a brown-slip ground, is illustrated by Yutaka Mino, Freedom of Clay and Brush through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz'u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1980, pp. 212-213, pl. 94. A similar decorative scheme of white-slip flowers on a brown-slip ground can be seen on a vase of more exaggerated baluster form, in the Idemitsu Art Gallery, illustrated by Koyama Fujio, ed., Toki Koza (Lecture of Ceramics), vol. 6: Chugoku II So (China II Song), Tokyo, 1971, no. 83.
Other green-glazed wares which have been painted with brown slip, and then more cursorily incised with simple details, include one illustrated by Hasebe Gakuji, op. cit., no. 5, and three vases illustrated by Yutaka Mino, op. cit., pp. 214-215. pl. 95 (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University), and figs. 277 and 278 (private Japanese collection and the Burrell Collection at the Camphill Museum, Glasgow, respectively). Two further examples include the vase illustrated by R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. 3 (II), London, 2006, p. 544, no. 1541, and the example illustrated in the Handbook of the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, The Asia Society, New York, p. 66 (left).
Green glaze was reserved primarily for use on the more prestigious vessels, in particular vases with trumpet-shaped mouth and high-shouldered body tapering sharply to a flared foot, and the most frequently depicted motif was the peony. A green-glazed vase closely related to the current example, with a similar design of carved peony and scrolling leaves, but with a lipped mouth above the everted rim, is illustrated by Hasebe Gakuji, Toki Zenshu, 13, So no Jishuyo (Ceramics Anthology, 13, Song Cizhou ware), Tokyo, 1958, no. 46. Another green-glazed vase of related form and carved with peony, but with the blossoms rendered in white slip, was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 November 2016, lot 3387.
An incised meiping in the British Museum, of larger size and with a more dense and regular design of white-slip flowers against a brown-slip ground, is illustrated by Yutaka Mino, Freedom of Clay and Brush through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz'u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1980, pp. 212-213, pl. 94. A similar decorative scheme of white-slip flowers on a brown-slip ground can be seen on a vase of more exaggerated baluster form, in the Idemitsu Art Gallery, illustrated by Koyama Fujio, ed., Toki Koza (Lecture of Ceramics), vol. 6: Chugoku II So (China II Song), Tokyo, 1971, no. 83.
Other green-glazed wares which have been painted with brown slip, and then more cursorily incised with simple details, include one illustrated by Hasebe Gakuji, op. cit., no. 5, and three vases illustrated by Yutaka Mino, op. cit., pp. 214-215. pl. 95 (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University), and figs. 277 and 278 (private Japanese collection and the Burrell Collection at the Camphill Museum, Glasgow, respectively). Two further examples include the vase illustrated by R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. 3 (II), London, 2006, p. 544, no. 1541, and the example illustrated in the Handbook of the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, The Asia Society, New York, p. 66 (left).