Page 10 - Bonhams Wen Tang Collectiont, October 2014 Hong Kong

THE FENG WEN TANG COLLECTION
OF EARLY CHINESE CERAMICS
Rose Kerr
It is a relatively rare event these days to encounter an
assemblage of Chinese ceramics that covers a long date
range but yet manages to represent each period through
examples of rarity, high quality and scholarly interest. The Feng
Wen Tang collection embodies all three characteristics, making
it a stimulating prospect to write about.
The earliest pieces date to the Neolithic period, a time when
strange and wonderful pots were created by groups of people
living in different areas of China (termed “Cultures” in most
publications). I always tell students that if I were embarking on
an MA or PhD research project that is an era I would choose,
for it encompassed a wider range of ceramic technologies,
styles and presumed ideologies than any later time.
Starting in the Bronze Age, the second millennium BCE,
potters in the southern provinces of China (particularly Zhejiang
and Jiangsu) started to make high-fired “celadon” stonewares
with glazes that fully bonded to the body.1 By the Han and Jin
dynasties, deliberate glazes were concocted and coloured
brown or green by iron oxide.2 Brown-glazed vessels were
created to resemble bronze, while a greater number of small,
zoomorphic vessels with green glaze were part of a design
repertoire employed in larger sculpture, bronze, lacquer and
painted murals.
In north China an ever-more sophisticated range of green-
glazed ceramics were manufactured during the 6th-7th
century, some employing lead glazes and some high-fired
glazes. One outstanding type made during the Northern Qi
dynasty took the form of large vases elaborately decorated
with relief, moulded and applied ornament.3 Their motifs were
inspired by Central and West Asian products carried into
China down the overland Silk Road, along with music, dance,
fashion and religions such as Buddhism. Buddhism was itself
transmitted to China from India during the Han period, via the
Silk Route.
Lead glazes continued in popularity during the Liao dynasty.
Another feature of Liao ceramics is the imitation of silver in
form and decoration. Before true moulds were used to copy
silver shapes in ceramics in the 10th century, the sides of
Chinese whiteware and celadon vessels were often given
slight vertical indents while still soft after throwing. This allowed cloudy blue. Susan Chen evidently likes blackwares, and
8 | Bonhams
potters to hint at lobed silver forms without copying them
exactly, a practice that was typical of white Xing ware. Xing
ceramics often copied precious metal.4
By the 10th century celadon glazes of subtlety were made in
both north and south China. This refinement is typified by the
folded bowl form, that copied gold, silver and lacquer, and was
made in many of the major manufacturing centres including
the Yue kilns of Zhejiang, the Yaozhou kilns of Shaanxi, and
the Ding kilns of Hebei. Bowls with four lobes were common in
the Tang dynasty, with five lobes in the Five Dynasties period,
and with six lobes in the Northern Song.5
Quite different developments were taking place in Hunan
province. As the Xiang River flows northwards from Changsha
towards the smaller city of Tongguan, it passes through an
area of major kiln activity, where a unique range of underglaze
painted ceramics were manufactured from the 7th to 10th
centuries.These ceramics were used locally, and were also
exported, employing waterborne routes, for the kilns lay far
inland. The great Yangtze River carried heavily-laden barges
to the coast, where they were loaded onto ocean-going junks,
for transshipment at other ports. This is evidenced by the large
number of Changsha wares excavated at sites overseas, such
as Fustat (old Cairo) in Egypt. The famous“Belitung shipwreck”
is an Arab dhow that sank around the year 826 in the West
Java Sea, and it was carrying over 57,000 ceramics, the bulk
of them Changsha wares.
The Song dynasty is regarded by many as the apogee of
simple, sophisticated ceramic-making. In the early Song
period Yue kilns in Zhejiang province supplied mandatory
tribute wares to court, alongside Xing, Ding and Yaozhou
manufactories in north China.6 All four of these kilns are
represented in this collection, as well as wares that may
be highly valued but were considered “popular” rather than
“imperial” in their day. Perhaps the most surprising of these is
Jun ware, with its underglaze copper red splashes and subtle
blue glazes, that vary in tone, and have been described as “sky
clearing after rain”.
A precedent for Jun-style glazes are Tang dynastyLushan
wares from Henan province, with black glazes splashed with