Page 162 - Bonhams Wen Tang Collectiont, October 2014 Hong Kong

174 The phoenix design on the current vase would have been produced by
A fine and very rare Jizhou resist-decorated using a wax resist, thereby allowing the colour of the body to contrast
‘double phoenix’ baluster vase, meiping against the black glazed ground. The Phoenix, traditionally a symbol of
Southern Song Dynasty the Empress, was also regarded as an auspicious symbol of a happy
The tapering ovoid body with high shoulders rising to a short neck and prosperous marriage.
and lipped mouth rim, resist-decorated around the exterior on each
side with a pair of phoenix, applied with painted details in brown slip, A very similar meiping is illustrated by Robert D. Mowry in Hare’s Fur,
interspersed with cloud scrolls, all on a dark brown-black ground. Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown and Black-Glazed
29cm high Ceramics, 400–1400, Cambridge, 1996, pp.253–255, no.103. Another
related example from the T. T. Tsui Collection is illustrated by the Art
HK$600,000 - 800,000 Gallery of the University of Hong Kong, in the exhibition catalogue
US$77,000 - 100,000 Exhibition of Art Treasures from Shanghai and Hong Kong, Hong
Kong, 1996, p.106, no.40. A meiping with broader proportions and
南宋 吉州窯黑釉剔花雙鳳紋梅瓶 similarly decorated with phoenix, dated Yuan Dynasty, in the Harvard
Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, is illustrated in Chinese
Ceramics, From the Paleolithic Period through the Qing Dynasty, Yale
University Press New Haven, 2010, p.352, fig.7.29.

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