A Rare Small Olive-Brown-Glazed Jar and Cover

EARLY SUI DYNASTY, CIRCA 600

Details

A Rare Small Olive-Brown-Glazed Jar and Cover
Early Sui dynasty, circa 600
The compressed globular jar with stamped decoration of flowerhead roundels alternating with plant motifs within linear borders below a band of impressed semi-circles interrupted by six loop handles arranged in two pairs and two singles on the shoulder, with a deep groove crisply cut above the foot and another on the slightly concave base, covered with a thin crackle-suffused glaze of olive-brown color stopping below the rim and also mid-body, the interior also glazed, the countersunk center of the cover with a loop handle rising from a large impressed lotus encircled by a petal band on the rounded, everted rim, the glaze pooling to a darker tone in the impressed areas
4in. (10.2cm.) across, box
Falk Collection no. 151.

Provenance

Mathias Komor, New York, February 1945.

Exhibited

Ice and Green Clouds: Traditions of Chinese Celadon, Indianapolis Museum of Art; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts; New York, The Asia Society Galleries; Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum; The Art Institute of Chicago, 1987 - 1988, no. 39.

Lot Essay

In the catalogue entry for this jar, no. 39, in Ice and Green Clouds, pp. 112-113, Y. Mino and K. R. Tsiang refer to a nearly identical green-glazed cover, illustrated fig. 39a, p. 112, recovered from tomb no. 4 at Huangnitang, in the Southern suburbs of Changsha, Hunan province, believed to be of Sui date, and illustrated in Kaogu, 1965:5, pl. VII:13. Also mentioned are other vessels with similar stamped decoration uncovered from Sui tombs in the Changsha area. Kaogu Xuebao, 1959:3, pp. 94-97.

Similar impressed and incised decoration can also be seen on shards of Sui dynasty date, unearthed in 1975 from the Xiangyin kiln site in northern Hunan, included in the exhibition, Kiln Sites of Ancient China, British Museum, London, and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1980, nos. 280-284. Mino and Tsiang, Ice and Green Clouds, p. 112, note that some of the vessels found at the Xiangyin kilns have a deep groove cut into the base, similar to that on the Falk example.

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