A RARE PAINTED GRAY POTTERY HU

Details

A RARE PAINTED GRAY POTTERY HU
HAN DYNASTY

The well-potted body painted with two bands of lozenges and comma scrolls separating a narrow band of striding beasts and linear scrolls and a wider band of hunting scenes alternately depicting either a man with a spear facing a charging ram or a man with a bow and arrow aiming at a wild boar, the scenes divided by trees, all below a wide chevron band alternately filled with foliate scroll outlined in white and reserved on the black pottery ground and what may be abstract masks reserved on a red ground, raised on a pedestal foot, all in brick red, white and pale gray pigment, extensive earth adhering (shallow rim chip)
13 3/8in. (34cm.) high

Lot Essay

Although hunting scens can be found on green and amber-glazed hu-form vases from the Han period, the finely painted hunting scene on the present lot appears to be quite rare. Painted hu are more commonly decorated with bands of abstract cloud scroll or geometric pattern, as in the example unearthed in 1960, in Luoyang, now in the Henan Provincial Museum, illustrated in the exhibition Catalogue, Treasures from the Han, The Empress Place Museum, Singapore, May 1990-May 1991, p. 98; or as seen in the vessel illustrated by Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. I, London, 1994, no. 71

The result of Oxford thermoluminescence test no. 766h79 is consistent with the dating of this lot