A Rare Late Neolithic Painted Black Pottery Tripod Vessel, Li

INNER MONGOLIA, XIAJIADIAN CULTURE, CIRCA 1500 B.C.

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A Rare Late Neolithic Painted Black Pottery Tripod Vessel, Li
Inner Mongolia, Xiajiadian Culture, Circa 1500 B.C.
The tall slightly waisted body decorated with two registers of cruciform scrolls within rectangular double line borders joined at the corners mid-body by four-point stars with circular centers, the thick everted rim similarly decorated on the interior, all in pale orange and white pigment reserved on a black ground
10¾in. (27.4cm.) high

Lot Essay

Similar painted vessels have been excavated at prehistoric sites in Inner Mongolia considered to be of the early Xiajiadian cultural phase.
See Zhongguo wenwu jinghua (Gems of China's Cultural Relics), Wenwu Press, Beijing, 1990, fig. 28; Kaogu 1992:4, pl. 4; and Kaogu 1975:2, p. 101, fig. 3. And the li from Dadianzi, Aohanqi, Inner Mongolia, included in the exhibition, The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 19 September 1999 - 2 January 2000, p. 154, no. 41.

See, also, the similar vessel painted in the same palette but with hooked scrolls, from the Hardy Collection, sold in these rooms, 21 September 1995, lot 3.

The decoration on the present li is more geometric than on the cited examples.

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