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Lot Essay
Amongst the most iconic of the large forms seen in Yuan dynasty porcelain is the tall meiping (literally ‘prunus vase’) with elegant tapering shoulders, exemplified by the current vessel. In addition to being used to display plum blossoms and other flowers, such vessels were also used for wine and other beverages.
It is exceptionally rare to find a Yuan meiping completely covered in a white glaze, rather than decorated with underglaze cobalt blue. The thick opaque white glaze may be categorized as luanbai (egg-white), for its goose-egg-like appearance. In her discussion of a Yuan ewer covered with a luanbai glaze illustrated in Serene Pleasure: The Jinglexuan Collection of Chinese Ceramics, Seattle, 2001, p. 40, no. 17, Rosemary E. Scott notes the glaze "was developed around the 1320s, in the mid-Yuan period. The opaque white is achieved by deliberately decreasing the amount of calcium oxide added to the glaze in the form of ash…Lower calcium oxide content means that many quartz particles remain undissolved and suspended in the glaze, resulting in the opaque effect. Also contributing to this effect are the minute gas bubbles retained in the thick glaze and the crystals that formed during the cooling. They together make the opaque luanbai glaze creamy and white."
It is exceptionally rare to find a Yuan meiping completely covered in a white glaze, rather than decorated with underglaze cobalt blue. The thick opaque white glaze may be categorized as luanbai (egg-white), for its goose-egg-like appearance. In her discussion of a Yuan ewer covered with a luanbai glaze illustrated in Serene Pleasure: The Jinglexuan Collection of Chinese Ceramics, Seattle, 2001, p. 40, no. 17, Rosemary E. Scott notes the glaze "was developed around the 1320s, in the mid-Yuan period. The opaque white is achieved by deliberately decreasing the amount of calcium oxide added to the glaze in the form of ash…Lower calcium oxide content means that many quartz particles remain undissolved and suspended in the glaze, resulting in the opaque effect. Also contributing to this effect are the minute gas bubbles retained in the thick glaze and the crystals that formed during the cooling. They together make the opaque luanbai glaze creamy and white."