Provenance: Yin Chuan Tang Ltd., Hong Kong, 1 February 1994.
Greenwald Collection no. 19. 

Literature: Gerald M. Greenwald, The Greenwald Collection, Two Thousand Years of Chinese Ceramics, 1996, no. 19.

Note: Flasks of this unusual type were inspired by Liao leather pilgrim bottles. W. Watson, Tang and Liao Ceramics, New York, 1984, pp. 224-6, divides pilgrim's bottles, also known as 'cockscomb' in Chinese, into five distinct chronological groups. The present flask likely belongs to the fourth group where "the flattened body of the earlier type becomes round in the the plan and even subspherical, the spout smaller and the handle more prominent". A larger (9¾ in.) flask of this type without the 'feather' molding was included in the exhibition, Chinese Art from the Ferris Luboshez Collection, University of Maryland, 23 March - 30 April 1972, no. 6, fig. 2. Another smaller (12.5 cm.) flask is illustrated in Sekai Toji Zenshu, Tokyo, 1976, vol., 11, p. 141, no. 126.