JIN-YUAN DYNASTY, 13TH CENTURY

Glazed stoneware water bottles or canteens of this shape appear to be quite rare. A Cizhou-type cut-glaze example with four straps spanning the encircling groove, and a shorter spout, dated Xixia or Jin-Yuan dynasty, late 12th-13th century, was sold at Christie's New York, The Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth Part IV, 20 March 2015, lot 844. The Ellsworth bottle was illustrated by R. D. Mowry in Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 202-204, no. 75, where the author notes, p. 203, that canteens of this flattened type are known as bianhu. Another with decoration cut or carved through a black glaze, dated 12th-13th century, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is illustrated by R. Kerr in `Kiln Sites of Ancient China', Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society,vol. 46, 1981-82, p. 61, pl. 18. This latter bottle has a short spout but no groove or straps. The shape of these vessels seems to first appear in grey pottery during the Neolithic period, such as the example ascribed to the Liangzhu culture (3300-2200 BC), illustrated in Gems of China's Cultural Relics, Beijing, 1992, no. 6, where it is described as a turtle-shaped pottery hu.