Page 101 - Mounted Oriental Porcelain, The Getty Museum

I 8. B O W L

THE PORCELAIN: Chinese (Yongzheng), 172,3-35
THE GILT-BRONZE MOUNTS: French, circa 1750-55
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HEIGHT: I ft., Z /! in. (36.9 cm); WIDTH: i ft., 4% in. (41.2 cm); DEPTH: n in. (27.9 cm)
72.01.42

DESCRIPTION
The deep, thickly potted oviform bowl has a clear
pale gray glaze, with a fine dark gray crackle and a faint
secondary golden crackle (fig. i8A). It is richly mounted
around the rim and the foot with scrolled, foliated, and
pierced gilt bronze. At each side a tall scrolling handle
(fig. i SB) of gilt-bronze acanthus leaves entwined with
flowers and berries links the rim to the foot, clasping the
lower part of the bowl (fig. i8c). The foot ring of the
bowl has been ground down to accommodate it to a
tall, gilt-bronze base of scrolling acanthus that forms the
four feet (fig. 180). It is pierced with a band of ovaloes.

MARKS None.

COMMENTARY FlG. ISA
A cluster of berries at the junction of the handle
and the bowl is missing on one side. The porcelain is
cracked beneath one of the handles. Approximately half larly glazed vase, with later mounts, is in the James A.
an inch of the rim has been ground away to accommo- de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, En-
date the upper mount. gland. 2 A similarly mounted bowl of enameled famille
Monochrome crackle porcelains such as this were rose porcelain was sold in Paris in 1971. 3 The mounts
inspired by the classic Kuan and Ko wares of the twelfth- of all these vases were probably made by the same
century Song dynasty. The celadon glaze was applied fondeur-ciseleur.
over a black or dark gray body before the piece was fired The shape of the rim mount might suggest at first
in a reducing kiln; the variations in the crackle and glaze sight that this bowl was originally lidded. The shape of
color were achieved by changes in the firing cycle. The the handles, however, makes it impossible to insert a lid.
crackle itself is due to a difference in the coefficient of Porcelaine grise is very rarely mentioned in the
expansion between the body and the glaze, so that in Livre-journal of Lazare Duvaux, and most of the refer-
cooling, the tensions created caused the cracks to appear. ences to gray porcelain are clearly European; however,
This type of ceramic ware was accidentally discovered at Madame de Pompadour brought to the shop for repair
the southern Song kilns five hundred years earlier. on June 12,1753: "Une... garniture deporcelainegrise,
A porcelain bowl with a gray-crackled glaze, but garnie partie en or & partie en argent dore remise a
lacking the gilt-bronze handles and the mount around neuf."* Such rich mounting would have been applied
the rim, was formerly in the Wrightsman Collection at only to rare and highly prized Chinese porcelain.
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the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. A simi-

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