A Pair of Hexagonal Phoenix Ewers, China, Early Kangxi Periode, Circa 1700. Photo courtesy Vanderven Oriental Art.

Height : 25cm - Price on request

These ewers are delicately painted in underglaze blue all over the body and lid, with flowering branches and small flying insects. The flowers in the panels on the main body represent the four seasons (plum, peony, lotus and Chrysanthemum). Around the slightly splayed foot, there are lotus petals in relief. The hexagonal formed bodies have slender spouts ending in phoenix-heads. The birds seem to sing cheerfully with their opening beaks and smiling eyes, the crest feathers curled back.

Phoenixes first appear on the neck and top of ewers in the early Tang Dynasty. Most of such Tang ewers are made in glazed ceramics with sancai (tri-color) or qingyou (celadon) colours. Two fine examples of these are in the National Palace Museum collection, Beijing. A variant in greenish white glaze - qingbai - is in the Brooklyn Museum collection. These early examples with this type of imagery are thought to reflect cultural interchanges during this period. A well-known group of Sassanian silver ewers recovered from tombs in southern Russia could well have been the inspiration for this decoration.

On later porcelain ewers, the phoenix - a very auspicious bird in Chinese culture – appears on spouts. An early example in blue-and-white from the Yuan Dynasty, has a short spout on a flat round ewer and is in the collection of Yili Kazakh Autonomous Prefectural Museum, China (exhibited in ‘Splendors in Smalt: Art of Yuan Blue-and-White Porcelain’ in the Shanghai Museum).

The early Kangxi period ewers, such as ours, are a variation on the form of the arabic kendi - a ewer with no handle. This form of phoenix head ewer are known in underglaze blue as well as famille verte enamels – a pair of which are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. These types of exoticly shaped porcelains were very popular in Europe, and were very expensive in their day.

However, the mythical phoenix is quite different from the western one. It is is considered a very special mythological beast in Chinese culture. It is the ruler of all feathered creatures and has many connotations. The Phoenix (feng) is associated with the female, empress or wife. It is often paired with its counterpart the dragon (long) , which stands for the male, emperor or husband. This bird was originally known fully as the fenghuang, before being shortened to just feng. It was then gender specific: feng being the male phoenix and huang the female. The pairing of the two types of phoenixes can also signify loyalty and harmony in marriage.

Provenance: Previously in the Bjorn Winblad collection (1918-2006)

Literature: S. Little, Chinese Ceramics of the transitional Period 1620-1683, China Institute of America, 183, pl 48
C.J.A. Jörg, Chinese Ceramics in the Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, London, 1997, A Kangxi famille verte pair of ewers of the same form no.177.

Vanderven Oriental Art. MasterArt at TEFAF 2014 on stand 814. 14-23 march 2014 - http://www.masterart.com/