A Blue and White Porcelain Jar Painted with the Ten Signs of Long Life (Shipjangsaeng)

JOSEON DYNASTY (LATE 19TH CENTURY)

Details

A Blue and White Porcelain Jar Painted with the Ten Signs of Long Life (Shipjangsaeng)
Joseon dynasty (late 19th century)
The tall and slender jar with rounded shoulders rising from a tapered foot, painted in lines and washes of underglaze cobalt blue with a panel representing the Ten Signs of Long Life, represented by a flying crane, bamboo, leaping deer, standing stag, bullocho fungus, pine and rock, the high, upright neck painted with three scalloped floral sprays, the jar also applied with a glassy transparent glaze with dense crackle; inward-slanted foot rim unglazed, sand adhesion to recessed base
16 1/8in. (40.8cm.) high

Lot Essay

This tall jar uses imagery from the Ten Signs of Long Life derived from the Daoist immortality cult that developed in China during the Han dynasty. Their auspicious symbolism was extremely popular in all strata of Korean society during the Joseon dynasty and they appear in most of the decorative arts of this period. Many of these, as here, use a selection of the set of motifs to represent all ten.

The jar has close affinities with another Shipjangsaeng jar of nearly the same size with cobalt blue and copper red decoration; see National Museum of Korea, Seoul, intro., selection and notes by Choi Sunu, vol. 2 of The World's Great Collections: Oriental Ceramics (Tokyo, New York and San Francisco: Kodansha International, 1982), no. 302.

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