Page 159 - Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art II
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PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION Glazed stoneware water bottles or canteens of this shape appear to be
quite rare. A Cizhou-type cut-glaze example with four straps spanning the
2309 encircling groove, and a shorter spout, dated Xixia or Jin-Yuan dynasty,
A RARE CIZHOU-TYPE RUSSET-PAINTED BLACKISH-BROWN- late 12th-13th century, was sold at Christie’s New York, The Collection of
GLAZED CANTEEN Robert Hatfeld Ellsworth Part IV, 20 March 2015, lot 844. The Ellsworth
JIN-YUAN DYNASTY, 13TH CENTURY bottle was illustrated by R. D. Mowry in Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell, and
Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400,
The compressed water bottle is covered with a lustrous black glaze Cambridge, 1996, pp. 202-204, no. 75, where the author notes, p. 203,
painted in russet on the domed top with an abstract bird, and is that canteens of this fattened type are known as bianhu. Another with
encircled by a groove spanned at one end by a small strap and at the decoration cut or carved through a black glaze, dated 12th-13th century,
other end has an upright spout fanked by strap handles below a wide, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is illustrated by R. Kerr in ‘Kiln Sites
everted rim. The slightly rounded, conical lower body tapers to a fat, of Ancient China’, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society,vol. 46,
unglazed ring foot surrounding a glazed base. 1981-82, p. 61, pl. 18. This latter bottle has a short spout but no groove
9 in. (23 cm.) wide or straps. The shape of these vessels seems to frst appear in grey pottery
during the Neolithic period, such as the example ascribed to the Liangzhu
$30,000-50,000 culture (3300-2200 BC), illustrated in Gems of China’s Cultural Relics,
Beijing, 1992, no. 6, where it is described as a turtle-shaped pottery hu.
PROVENANCE:
金/元 磁州系黑釉褐斑鳥紋扁壺
Sotheby’s London, 7 December 1993, lot 183.
(another view)
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