Page 132 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Song Ceramics

T his extraordinary piece embodies the ideals of Song court
aesthetics in its understated simplicity that veils the depth
of expertise and skill required in creating such a vessel. It is
extremely thinly potted, with sharp and precise outlines, created
by vertical moulding in two halves, an unusual way of forming in
the Song dynasty (960-1279). On account of its grey body that
has fired a dark purplish brown, where it is exposed at the foot,
and its muted opaque grey-green glaze that shows a fine web of
crackles, the present piece can be attributed to one of the guan
(‘official’) Hangzhou kilns that were established in the Southern
Song capital to produce ceramics for the court after the move of
the Song imperial house to the south in 1127 had precluded access
to products of the northern manufactories, such as the Ru kilns of
Baofeng in Henan. Body and glaze of this piece are characteristic of
pieces considered to have been produced by the Jiaotanxia (‘Below
the Suburban Altar’) kilns, which have been tentatively identified
with kiln sites discovered at Wuguishan in the south of Hangzhou.
The ten-lobed form with its quatrefoil-oval section, evoking fruit
shapes at the body and flowers at the rim and foot, is similarly
known from the Longquan kilns, but Longquan examples are less
elegant in shape, more thickly and heavily potted, and differ in
material. Two related vases have been recovered from a hoard
at Jinyu village near Suining in Sichuan province, an area invaded
by the Mongols in 1234, to whom the town fell in 1242; see Fūin
sareta Nansō tōki ten/Newly Discovered Southern Song Ceramics.
A Thirteenth-Century “Time Capsule”, Odakū Museum, Tokyo,
1998, cat. nos 16 and 17. Although in the catalogue both vases have
been attributed to the Longquan kilns, they seem in every respect
fundamentally different. One (cat. no. 17) shows the characteristic
un-crackled blue-green glaze and the brick-red fired biscuit of
Longquan wares, and is of sharp lozenge-shaped section; this vase
has been included by Zhu Boqian, the main archaeologist of the
Longquan region, in his publication Longquan yao qingci/Celadons
from Longquan Kilns, Taipei, 1998, pl. 18. The other (cat. no. 16) is
130 | SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比
close to the present piece, of similar, elegantly lobed, quatrefoil-oval
section, with a crackled grey-green glaze and dark brown body, and
thus seems more in line with Jiaotanxia wares. A fragment of a slightly
larger vase of this type was unearthed at the Jiaotanxia kiln complex
and is illustrated in Sekai tōji zenshū / Ceramic Art of the World, Tokyo,
1955, vol. 10, p. 191, fig. 28c.
Archaeological excavations of the Jiaotanxia kilns have revealed a
vast kiln complex with numerous workshops and one dragon kiln
that extended over eighty metres. Among the products of the kilns,
thinly potted vessels made from dark bodies covered in thick glazes
similar to this vase have been recovered. Zhu Boqian in ‘A Pearl
among Greenwares: Guan Ware of the Southern Song’, Transactions
of the Oriental Ceramics Society, vol. 56, 1991-1992, pp. 29-30, notes
that this thick crackled glaze was achieved through the application of
different layers of glaze that were fired successively. The combination
of a dark body with layers of greenish-grey glaze resulted in an effect
similar to the highly treasured material, jade.
A closely related vase is illustrated in George J. Lee, Selected Far
Eastern Art in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 1970, pl.
37; another was sold in these rooms, 27th October 1992, lot 20; two
were sold in our New York rooms, 23rd/24th May 1974, lot 325, and
2nd June 1993, lot 294; and a further example from the Maxwell Vos
collection, was sold in our London rooms, 13th March 1973, lot 171.
See also a slightly larger vase of this form in the Tokyo National
Museum, Tokyo, included in the Museum’s exhibition Chinese Arts of
the Sung and Yüan Periods, Tokyo, 1961, cat. no. 189; one published in
Henry Trubner and William Jay Rathbun, Asiatic Art in the Seattle Art
Museum, Seattle, 1973, pl. 191; another from the collection of Richard
Bryant Hobart, sold in our New York rooms, 23rd May 1969, lot 53; and
a fourth sold in these rooms, 16th November 1973, lot 66.