CHINA, XIXIA KINGDOM OR JIN-YUAN DYNASTY, LATE 12TH-13TH CENTURY

Vessels of this unusual shape are referred to as tortoise-shaped, aoxing or guixing. As Robert Mowry notes in Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1996, p. 203, canteens of this rare flattened type are known as bianhu, and those with four handles, as with the present example, as sixi bianhu. The author suggests that canteens of this shape may have been inspired by metalwork examples of Middle or Near Eastern provenance, and that they were precursors of blue and white bianhu made at Jingdezhen in the early fifteenth century. The shape is also related to earlier white-glazed vessels of tortoise shape, such as the Ding ware example illustrated by Zhang Bai in Complete Collection of Ceramic Art Unearthed in China, vol. 3, Beijing, 2008, no. 100, where it is dated Northern Song. Unlike the present vessel, the Ding ware example is made in imitation of a tortoise, with head-form spout, four small legs and cell-shaped decoration carved on the rounded top to imitate the carapace.