A RARE UNDERGLAZE-RED PEAR-SHAPED VASE, YUHUCHUNPING

Details

A RARE UNDERGLAZE-RED PEAR-SHAPED VASE, YUHUCHUNPING
YUAN DYNASTY

Of elegant, rounded shape, painted in well-fired tones of underglaze reddish gray with a wide band of meandering peony scroll, with flowerheads alternately full-faced and profile, with a band of petal lappets below and a trefoil border above, the neck decorated with bands of stylized waves, key-fret and stiff, upright leaves below the everted mouth-rim painted on top with a narrow band of classic scroll repeated on the slightly spreading foot, neck restored, some firing cracks
13in. (33cm.) high

Lot Essay

For an identical vase in the Tokyo National Museum see Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, Japan, 1982, vol. 1, no. 112; and also illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, Tokyo, 1976, vol. 1, no. 721. For another in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, see Sherman E. Lee and Wai-kam Ho, Chinese Art under the Mongols: The Yuan Dynasty, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1968, Catalogue, no. 170; and one other example, in The Kokusui Museum, Japan, is illustrated in the revised Sekai Toji Zenshu, vol. 13, fig. 146

Vases of this shape with a broad peony scroll below a band of trefoils are known with a variety of neck designs but with varying degrees of success in the firing of the copper-red. For a discussion of the group see J. M. Addis, 'A Group of Underglaze Red', T.O.C.S., vol. 31, London, 1957-1959, pp. 15-37

For similar vases sold at auction see Sotheby's, Hong Kong, May 17, 1988, lot 12 and Christie's, London, April 10/11, 1984, lot 208 and also illustrated by Anthony du Boulay, Christie's Pictorial History of Chinese Ceramics, New Jersey, 1984, color frontispiece