A RARE LARGE GRAYISH-OLIVE-GLAZED PIERCED PROTO-PORCELAIN JAR

Details

A RARE LARGE GRAYISH-OLIVE-GLAZED PIERCED PROTO-PORCELAIN JAR
WARRING STATES/HAN DYNASTY

Of well-potted bottle form, the thick sides of the bulbous body pierced with three rows of precisely cut, elongated triangles separated by raised bands with crisp edges, bordered above and below by wider raised bands of sharply cut, narrow, vertical grooves, a similar band repeated at the top of the tall neck where it begins to slightly flare, covered with a mottled glaze of grayish-olive tone which continues over the inwardly canted rim into the interior
20¼in. (51.4cm.) high

Literature

Splendour of Ancient Chinese Art, Hong Kong, 1996, no. 5

Lot Essay

No other example of the same size, shape and decoration in this type of ware appears to be published

The pattern of pierced, elongated triangles on the present lot can be compared to the decoration on an unglazed earthenware boshanlu, dated to the early Western Han period, illustrated by Rand Castile in "The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Avery Brundage Collection", Orientations, January 1987, p. 26 and also to that on another boshanlu of the same period, but glazed, illustrated by William Willetts, Foundations of Chinese Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1965, p. 277, no. 154. For an example of another proto-porcelain glazed vessel, similarly decorated with bands of sharply-cut vertical grooves, see The Tsui Museum of Art, Chinese Ceramics I, Hong Kong, 1991, no. 1

The results of Oxford thermoluminescence test nos. 866c55 and 866e61 are consistent with the dating of this lot