A large russet-mottled black-glazed vase, Northern Song dynasty (960-1127)

8 mars 2023

A large russet-mottled black-glazed vase, Northern Song dynasty (960-1127)

Lot 853. A large russet-mottled black-glazed vase, Northern Song dynasty (960-1127); 11 1/4 in. (28.6 cm.) high, cloth box. Estimate USD 20,000 – USD 30,000. Unsold. © Christie's 2023

The vase has an ovoid body that rises to a short, narrow neck with a wide flaring lip, and is covered overall with a lustrous brownish-black glaze speckled with russet mottling that ends above the foot.

Provenance: Linyushanren Collection, Tokyo.
J. J. Lally & Co., New York, no. 4840.

Literature: R. Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 135-136, no. 33.

Exhibited: Cambridge, Massachusetts, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, 23 December 1995-10 March 1996.
New York, China Institute Gallery, 20 April-6 July 1996.
Madison, Wisconsin, Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, 9 November 1996-19 January 1997.

Note: In his discussion of the current vase in Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 135-36, Robert Mowry cites a very similar vase in the Idemitsu Museum, Tokyo, which has a brush-written inscription on the base reading: Xuanhe yuannian wuyue ershiri suo zao, ('Made on the twentieth day of the fifth month of the first year of the Xuanhe [1119]'). The Idemitusu vase is illustrated in Sodai no toji (Ceramics of the Song Dynasty), Tokyo, 1979, no. 74; in Chugoku toji: Idemitsu bijutsukan zohin zuroku (Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection), Tokyo, 1987, no. 530; and was also previously published by Y. Mino in Freedom of Clay and Brush Through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz’u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis, 1980, p. 224.

A related truncated meiping is illustrated by Li Zhiyan and S. Kwan, Song dai taoci (Song Ceramics), Hong Kong, 2012, pp. 408-409, no. 168, where the authors cite another similar example of smaller size in the Beijing Palace Museum, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - 32 - Northern and Southern Song (I), Hong Kong, 1996, p. 223, no. 201.