YUAN DYNASTY (1279-1368)

There are four comparable vases of similar shape and decoration: the first, measuring 27.4 cm. high, is registered in Japan as National Treasure and now belongs to the Oriental Ceramics Museum, Osaka; (fig. 1) the second, in a Japanese private collection and registered as Important Cultural Property, is illustrated in Koyama Fujio, ed., Sekai toji zenshu: China Sung and Liao Dynasties, vol. 10, Tokyo, 1956, pls. 17 and 49; the third is in the Baur Collection, Geneva, measuring 28 cm. high, and illustrated by John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics, vol. 1, no. A104; and another in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, illustrated by William Bowyer Honey, The Ceramic Art of China and Other Countries of the Far East, London, 1945, pl. 36. Compare also a pair of similar garlic-mouth bottle vases also from the Yangdetang Collection, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 November 2016, lot 3133. (fig. 2)