Page 115 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

100 Kevin McLoughlin
though the form had almost certainly already arrived in China during the previous
Mongol ruled Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). By the early Ming, Chinese equivalents
were being modeled in porcelain and could be found with celadon glazes, in mono -
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chrome white, or decorated in underglaze-blue or underglaze copper-red. Porcelain
ewers were produced at the great ceramic producing site of Jingdezhen during the
Ming for the export market, originally for the Middle East and, in the later stages
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of the dynasty, for Europe. There is evidence that isolated examples of the ewer
form had in fact arrived in China via Central Asia much earlier than the Yuan-Ming
period during which, as we have seen, began to be produced in ceramic form in
significant quantities. In 1983, a silver ewer featuring Roman-Sassanian iconography
was excavated from the tomb of Li Xian (d. 549), a general and governor of the
Northern Zhou dynasty (557–581), in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. In form,
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the Li Xian silver-gilt ewer features a pedestal ring foot, a pear-shaped body rising
to a fluted neck topped with a duck-billed spout, and a high loop handle. Originally
believed to be Sassanian, the Li Xian ewer is now thought to have been made in
Tokkaria or Bactria. Tang dynasty (618–906) Chinese silverware was heavily
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influenced by imported silverware, likely to have come to China mainly through
tributes to the Tang court from the Sassanian court, and was in turn reproduced in
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Tang sancai glazed ceramic wares. By the thirteenth century, Middle Eastern brass

Figure 7.1 The Hope Grant Ewer. NMS A.1884.54. By kind permission of the National
Museums Scotland.