Lot 524. A rare and large 'Yue' chicken-head ewer, Southern Dynasties (420-589). Height 17 3/8  in., 44.2 cm. Estimate USD 30,000 — 50,000. Lot Sold 43,750 USD. Courtesy Sotheby's.

the tall ovoid body rising from a flat foot and surmounted by a tall tapering neck rising to an everted galleried mouth, the body encircled by double ribs and applied with two small double lug handles centering a mock spout modeled as a chicken's head, set with a slender arched strap handle with a dragon head terminal biting the rim, applied with a thick olive-green glazed pooling at the rings and stopping irregularly above the foot to reveal the stoneware body, two Japanese wood boxes (5).

Provenance: Sotheby’s London, 15th December 1981, lot 121.

Note: Ewers of this type, with a mock spout, are known as ‘heavenly chicken ewers’, emblematic of their function as tomb wares. These ewers began to be produced in the Jin dynasty (265-420) by the Yue kilns in Zhejiang province, but they were soon copied by other southern manufactories and later adopted by northern celadon kilns. Ewers with chicken-head spouts are known in various sizes and proportions, their popularity attributed to the auspicious connotations of chickens, which were believed to be able to exorcise evil and cure diseases.

A similar ewer was unearthed at Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, and is illustrated in Historical Relics Unearthed in New China, Beijing, 1872, pl. 141; and another with elaborate sprig-molded reliefs and attributed to the Northern Qi dynasty (550-577), is illustrated in Liu Liang-yu, A Survey of Chinese Ceramics 1. Early Wares: Prehistoric to Tenth Century, Taipei, 1991, p. 152 (top right).

Sotheby's. A Noble Pursuit: Important Chinese and Korean Art from a Japanese Private Collection, New York, 11 Sep 2019