A FINE AND VERY RARE TEADUST-GLAZED TANKARD

Details
A FINE AND VERY RARE TEADUST-GLAZED TANKARD
IMPRESSED YONGZHENG FOUR-CHARACTER SEAL MARK AND OF THE PERIOD

The tankard is modelled after an early Ming blue and white prototype with a globular body rising to a cylindrical neck, a horizontal rib at the base of the neck and a thickened mouth rim, the pierced handle modelled as a long-necked goose, all covered in a rich green glaze with pale brown patches where the glaze thins, the foot unglazed and brown-dressed, the nianhao in the concave base is covered in a brown glaze
6 5/8 in. (16.8 cm.) high, box

Exhibited
Christie's London, An Exhibition of Important Chinese Ceramics from the Robert Chang Collection, 2-14 June 1993, Catalogue, no. 51.

Lot Essay

Previously sold in these Rooms, 20 March 1990, lot 618.

The shape of this vessel owes its origin from imported Middle Eastern bronze models of this type; for a comparison of a similarly shaped vessel in the British Museum see Orientations, November 1987, p. 58, fig. 5a, dated A. D. 1484. The form was copied in the 15th century in blue and white; for two such examples, see Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 5, pl. 169, in the British Museum, and ibid., vol. 8, pl. 222 in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm. As with other vessels produced during the 18th century, the taste for archaism led to the shape being revived not merely in porcelain as in the case of the present lot, but also in cloisonne enamel. Cf. a Qianlong-marked cloisonne tankard in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrated by R. Kerr, Chinese Art and Design, p. 192, pl. J, from the Salting Bequest.

The colour of this glaze is derived from a high concentration of iron-oxide which had been under-fired to produce a speckled, greenish-yellow 'teadust' appearance, often poetically referred to in Chinese as 'eel-skin' glaze to distinguish it from the variety with a deeper green hue.

A similar tea-dust-glazed tankard with a Qianlong mark in the Beijing Palace Museum Collection, is illustrated in Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong, p. 459, pl. 141; another is in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, illustrated by He Li in Chinese Ceramics, 1996, p. 285, no. 567.

(US$77,000-100,000)

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