The tapering ovoid body surmounted by a trumpet neck rising to a rolled rim, fluidly painted in black over a white slip with two leafy peony sprays with incised details and covered with a thin transparent bright green glaze continuing over the mouth rim and pooling to a darker green on the flared pedestal foot.

Provenance : Private Japanese Collection, 1980s.

Note: In Cizhou wares this particular combination of painted and incised decoration under a green glaze appears primarily on vases of this shape, with a trumpet-shaped mouth and high-shouldered body tapering to a flared foot. The motif most frequently depicted is a peony stem shown upright to allow the leaves to fan out to the sides while one slender leaf rises up the neck towards the rim. The body is first covered with a white slip which is then painted and incised, and finally covered with a green glaze.

A number of these distinctive vases have been published, including a fragmentary vase recovered from the Cizhou site at Guantai, illustrated in Guantai Cizhou Yaozhi (The Cizhou Kiln Site at Guantai), Beijing, 1997, pl. 70, fig. 1. Three others are illustrated by Y. Mino, Freedom of Clay and Brush through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz'u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1980, pp. 214-5. pl. 95, illustrates a vase (20.6 cm. high) in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, and figs. 277 and 278, show vases from a Japanese collection and the Burrell Collection at the Camphill Museum, Glasgow, respectively. Two other similar vases are illustrated in Sekai toji zenshu, vol. 10, Tokyo, 1955, pls. 121 and 122. The first is 25.7 cm. high, which is very similar in height to the presentation, while the second is 28 cm. high. Two other smaller vases are illustrated in the Handbook of the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockfeller 3rd Collection, The Asia Society, New York, p. 66 (left), and in The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, New York, 1993, p. l295 (top).

See, also, the vase comparable in its height (25.2 cm.) to the present vase, which appears to have an equally well-preserved bright green glaze, illustrated by R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. 3 (II), London, 2006, p. 544, no. 1541.

Christie's. Masterpieces of Chinese Art. 17 September 2008. New York, Rockefeller Plaza.