A RARE GRAY POTTERY FIGURE OF A BACTRIAN CAMEL

THE PROPERTY OF A NEW YORK PRIVATE COLLECTOR

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A RARE GRAY POTTERY FIGURE OF A BACTRIAN CAMEL
NORTHERN WEI DYNASTY

Shown standing on a rectangular base, the small head with delicately and crisply modeled features below a crest of hair finely textured with incised lines, with more deeply incised and widely spaced hair markings in a band following the curve of the broad neck, the humps looped with twists of cloth above rectangular bamboo boards applied to either side atop a fitted blanket, some restoration--9 5/8 in. (24.5cm.) high, cloth stand and fitted wood box

Lot Essay

This camel with its almost cap-like patch of heavy fur on top of the head, the modeling of the head and body and the load set atop bamboo boards, is quite similar to a camel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 12, fig. 14. and another illustrated by William Watson, Art of Dynastic China, 1979, pl. 399. Compare also, the similar camels illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. I, 1976, pl. 173 and in Sekai toji zenshu, vol. 10, 1982, pl. 273

For two excavated examples of similar type, also with the loads set atop bamboo boards, one from a tomb in Quyang county, Hebei province, dated AD524, the other recovered from a tomb near Luoyang, Henan province, dated AD528, see Kaogu, 1972, no. 5, pl. 9:2 and Kaogu, no. 4, p. 221, fig. 7:2 respectively

The result of Oxford thermoluminescence test no. 566z40 is consistent with the dating of this lot