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Lot Essay
This elegant vessel is admired for both of its form and the beautiful glaze; the raised encircling lines on the neck give one of its Chinese names, xianwenping, 'vase with bow-string decoration'. For two larger Longquan bottle vases with the same profile and decoration, see one in the Tokyo Nezu Museum, illustrated by G. St. G. M. Gompertz, Chinese Celadon Wares, London, 1980, p. 153, pl. 75a; the other in the Hakone Art Museum, see Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. I, Tokyo, 1976, p.164, fig. 476. Another very similar Longquan bottle vase with a wider mouth is in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Porcelain of the Song Dynasty (II), Hong Kong, 1996, p. 115, no. 103 (fig. 1).
Vases of this form are potted with two different types of mouth rim, either a wide dish-shaped mouth or a slighted inverted galleried rim. The present vase falls into the latter category. Compare with a vase in the Nezu Museum in Tokyo illustrated in Sekai toji zenshu, vol. 12, Tokyo, 1977, no. 81, and another in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art in London published in M. Medley's Illustrated Catalogue of Celadon Wares, London, 1977, pl. V, no. 50.
These two types of mouth rims were contemporaneous, as evidenced by the finds from a Southern Song hoard excavated at Jinyucun, Suining City, Sichuan province in 1991, and from Longquan kilns sites. Vases from the former site are published in Newly Discovered Southern Song Ceramics - A Thirteenth-Century "Time Capsule", Japan, 1998, pp. 14-16, nos. 2-4, and from the latter in Longquan Qingci Yanjiu, Beijing, 1989, pl. 41, fig. 1.
These vases were also among the cargo of a wreck dating to 1323 which sunk off the Sinan coast of Korea on its way to Japan. See National Museum of Korea, Sinan Wreck Exhibition, Seoul, 1977, no. 15. Compare also the slightly larger example (16.8 cm. high) of the same type, sold at Christie’s New York, 18 March 2016, lot 1536, for USD 93,750.
Vases of this form are potted with two different types of mouth rim, either a wide dish-shaped mouth or a slighted inverted galleried rim. The present vase falls into the latter category. Compare with a vase in the Nezu Museum in Tokyo illustrated in Sekai toji zenshu, vol. 12, Tokyo, 1977, no. 81, and another in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art in London published in M. Medley's Illustrated Catalogue of Celadon Wares, London, 1977, pl. V, no. 50.
These two types of mouth rims were contemporaneous, as evidenced by the finds from a Southern Song hoard excavated at Jinyucun, Suining City, Sichuan province in 1991, and from Longquan kilns sites. Vases from the former site are published in Newly Discovered Southern Song Ceramics - A Thirteenth-Century "Time Capsule", Japan, 1998, pp. 14-16, nos. 2-4, and from the latter in Longquan Qingci Yanjiu, Beijing, 1989, pl. 41, fig. 1.
These vases were also among the cargo of a wreck dating to 1323 which sunk off the Sinan coast of Korea on its way to Japan. See National Museum of Korea, Sinan Wreck Exhibition, Seoul, 1977, no. 15. Compare also the slightly larger example (16.8 cm. high) of the same type, sold at Christie’s New York, 18 March 2016, lot 1536, for USD 93,750.