A Cizhou-Type Russet-Painted Blackish-Brown-Glazed Jar. Jin Dynasty, 12th-13th Century
A Cizhou-Type Russet-Painted Blackish-Brown-Glazed Jar. Jin Dynasty, 12th-13th Century. Photo: Christie's Images Ltd 2012
The broad-shouldered, tapering body is covered overall with a lustrous dark bluish-black glaze, and elegantly painted in russet slip with a pair of long-necked birds, possibly geese or cranes, in flight on the shoulder below a small, double-ringed mouth. 7 7/8 in. (20 cm.) high. Estimate $10,000 - $15,000
金 磁州窰系黑釉褐花雙鳳紋小口瓶
Provenance: J.J. Lally & Co., New York, 1993.
Notes: Ovoid jars of this type, with this distinctive small, double-ringed mouth, are termed xiaokou ping (small-mouthed bottles), and were probably used for storing wine and other liquids. Typically dark-glazed, such bottles are often painted in russet or rust-brown slip with abstract designs suggestive of birds in flight, or with abstract floral decoration, characteristically rendered with vigorous, calligraphic strokes.
A jar of this type, with floral decoration rather than the graceful, long-necked birds on the shoulder of the present jar, in the collection of Dr. Robert Barron, is illustrated by R.D. Mowry in Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers, Cambridge, 1996, p. 165, no. 55, and subsequently sold in these rooms, 30 March 2005, lot 303.
Christie's. Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art Part II, 13 September 2012. New York, Rockefeller Plaza