A FINE AND VERY RARE LARGE YUEYAO BEAR-FORM JAR

FINE CHINESE CERAMICS MONDAY, 4 NOVEMBER 1996 AT 10:30 A.M. PRECISELY (LOTS 701-818) EARLY WARES VARIOUS PROPERTIES

Details

A FINE AND VERY RARE LARGE YUEYAO BEAR-FORM JAR
WESTERN JIN DYNASTY

The double-gourd body rising to a waisted neck and a short splayed rim, attractively modelled to the top lobe with a moulded bear mask, the long snout, rounded eyes, pricked-up ears and whiskers well defined and detailed with short incisions and shallow indentations, applied with rope-twist arms resting on the knees of the relief moulded legs, holding a ribbed fruit in one hand, the other resting on the belly, the reverse with a groove indicating the spine above a long moulded tail flipped to one side at the end, the vessel further decorated with incised and combed lines indicating fur, impressed florettes, and short dotted lines, the glaze of translucent olive-green tone, the interior and slightly concave base unglazed exposing the dark body
9 in. (23 cm.) high, box

Lot Essay

This unusually large jar is of very rare form with only one related double-gourd example, also of a bear with similar features, from the Nien-Hsi Foundation, included in the National Museum of History, Taipei, Special Exhibition of Early Greenware, 1996.

A yue ware jar decorated with bears was published, one excavated in Yixing, Jiangsu, in 1976, and is now in the Nanjing Museum, illustrated in, Zhongguo Wenwu Jinghua Daquan, Ceramics, p. 200, no. 64; another sold in these Rooms, 31 October 1994, lot 521.

(US$130,000-200,000)

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