A PAINTED GRAY POTTERY MYTHICAL BEAST SUPPORT

Details

A PAINTED GRAY POTTERY MYTHICAL BEAST SUPPORT
HAN/SIX DYNASTIES

Modeled as a leonine-bodied, muscular beast, crouching as if to leap forward, the front legs and chest held low to the ground, the dragon head slightly raised and with pointed ears pricked back, arched eyebrows and proboscidean snout, pierced with a raised rectangular aperture between the shoulders, traces of purple and orange to the overall cream pigment, earth encrustation, some restoration--16½in. (42cm.) long

Lot Essay

Other examples, though not as elegantly modeled, and with the hind quarters raised off the ground, are in the Schloss Collection, included in the exhibition, Art of the Han, China Institute in America, 1979, Catalogue, p. 80, no. 56; and again in Into the Afterlife, Vassar College Art Gallery, September 28-November 25, 1990, illustrated by Candace J. Lewis in the Catalogue, p. 79, no. 31; and a pair illustrated by Yaw et al. in Spirit of Han, Southeast Asian Ceramic Society, 1991, Catalogue no. 42

The result of Oxford thermoluminescence test no. 666w79 is consistent with the dating of this lot