A Rare Olive-Glazed Stoneware Jar

SUI DYNASTY, 6TH CENTURY

細節

A Rare Olive-Glazed Stoneware Jar
Sui dynasty, 6th century
The baluster body incised with fine paired lines below the eight loop handles applied to the high shoulder and attached to the side of the short neck flaring slightly to a canted rim, covered with a crackle-suffused transparent glaze of olive tone pooling in pale milky blue tears and falling in an irregular line on the exterior to expose the granular ware burnt orange in the firing, the interior similarly glazed
8in. (20.2cm.) high, box
Falk Collection no. 16.

拍品專文

This jar has a transparent olive-toned glaze typical of 6th century stonewares made at northern Chinese kilns. This glaze was very fluid when it melted and so had to be applied only to the upper part of the jar in order to prevent it from running down the sides and sticking to whatever the piece was standing on in the kiln during firing. The attractive opalescent bluish color, seen where the glaze has run into thick pooled areas, is an optical effect due to the different phases of the glaze separating out during the early stages of cooling. A famous vessel, which shares with the Falk jar both its glaze characteristics and its strongly tapering form, is the Sui dynasty long-necked jar in the Art Institute of Chicago, illustrated by Y. Mino and K. R. Tsiang in Ice and Green Clouds - Traditions of Chinese Celadon, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1987, no. 40, pp. 114-5 and front cover.