Basin, Neolithic period, Majiayao culture, c. 3300-2000 BCEBasin, Neolithic period, Majiayao culture, c. 3300-2000 BCE. Earthenware with slip-painted decoration. H. 12.2 x D. 31.2 cm. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Partial gift of the Walter C. Sedgwick Foundation and partial purchase through the Ernest B. and Helen Pratt Dane Fund for Asian Art, 2006 (2006.170.19). Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

Provenance: Recorded Ownership History

[J.J. Lally & Co., New York, May 2004] sold; to Walter C. Sedgwick Foundation, Woodside, CA (2004-2006), partial gift; to Harvard University Art Museums, 2006.

Description: Circular basin with everted rim, rounded sides, lower body tapering inward to a flat base, and two crenellated handles positioned bilaterally on the exterior at the juncture where the lower body begins to taper; buff earthenware lightly burnished and decorated with geometric designs painted in dark brown slip before firing; painted designs include dots surrounded by concentric rings and sweeping arcs, bound by undulating parallel lines (on the interior), encircled dots separated by patterns of oblique triangles arranged in symmetrical clusters (on the rim), and two dots surrounded by concentric rings on the exterior walls. Majiayao culture, Majiayao type. From the upper Yellow River valley region; Gansu, Qinghai, or Ningxia province.

Compare to: Jar with similar painted designs excavated in 1954 from a Majiayao site in Sanping, Yongjing county, Gansu province, now in the National Museum of China. See Zhang Pengchuan, Zhongguo caitao tu pu [Handbook of Chinese Painted Pottery Illustrations] (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1990), no. 200.