Page 82 - Fine Chinese Art Bonhams London May 2018

the expertise was developed in craft family workshops in
Shanxi Province in North China. These workshops specialised
in glazed architectural components, generically referred to in
China as liuli 琉璃 which can be translated as ‘glaze-work’ (for
the historical development of Chinese architectural ceramics,
see C.Eng, Colours and Contrast: Ceramic Traditions in Chinese
Architecture, Leiden and Boston, 2015). Their products ranged
from simple roof tiles to large decorative finials composed from
separately fired parts and weighing several tons for the roofs of
imperial palaces. They also made large figurative statues such
as life-sized luohans, ‘worthy disciples of Buddha’, which were
fired in one piece as indeed were these guardian lions, for which
similar production methods, discussed below, would almost
certainly have been employed (Luohans have recently been the
subject of intensive study and the definitive work is by Eileen
Hsiang-Ling Hsu, Monks in Glaze: Patronage, Kiln Origin and
Iconography of the Yixian Luohans, Leiden and Boston, 2017; see
Fig.2 for one of the surviving luohan examples discussed below).

Each lion appears to be moulded in two hollow segments, a head
and a body which were subsequently luted (joined with ceramic
paste) before firing. In these examples the joint may be concealed
beneath their broad aubergine-coloured collars.
Fig. 2
Shaping, firing and then glazing shapes as complicated as these
would have been a skilful operation. The makers would have
also in yellow, with aubergine detailing in places, against a wanted not to make these figures as solid objects, because of the
background of blue clouds and water. Amongst the animals risk of explosive failure during firing. Instead, parts were shaped
depicted are a hare, a deer, a horse and a mythical qilin in full separately as hollow or thin mouldings, assembled by luting using
flight among clouds. Many of these are symbols from Buddhist ‘slip’ (a viscous liquid clay), then air-dried to ‘leather-hardness’
iconography and similar representations appear also on the before initial firing. Parts for the pedestals, being simpler
banded decoration at the base of the three surviving dragon- geometric shapes, could be modelled in press-moulds, but parts
screen walls from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), which are all for the bodies and heads required great skill.
in Shanxi Province in North China, and date from 1392 to 1607;
see C.Eng, Colours and Contrast: Ceramic Traditions in Chinese The greatest challenge would have been to hand-mould these
Architecture, Leiden and Boston, 2015, pp.211-221. parts as thinly as possible to reduce their thermal mass and
water content but without the clay slumping during drying or
The stepped layers above and below the waisted section are firing. A supporting armature of some kind would have received
covered successively one with smaller and the other larger an initial coarse modelling, followed by the application of a
stylised lotus petals in yellow, edge-highlighted in green. The smoother clay to give a ‘sculptural’ finish to its displayed surface.
petals are applied tightly together so that the blue ground Completely vegetal material, such as wood or bamboo, would
beneath is barely visible. These stylised petals were already have been unsuitable as an armature-former because it would
prominent as an architectural motif in the early Ming and the have carbonised and disintegrated during the first firing at 1000-
smaller versions on the adjacent panels appear more developed 1100°C. However, X-ray and conservation studies have shown
stylistically and are probably later in the period. the use in similarly large works of thin metal-rod armatures of
wrought iron wound with vegetal fibres which cushioned clay
Whilst yellow and green glazes belong to the sancai 三彩 ‘three- shrinkage during air-drying and, for time enough, the subsequent
colour’ palette of lead glazes widely used in China from the 5th thermal expansion of the metal rods during firing (see N.Wood,
century onwards, the turquoise, deep blue and aubergine colours C.Doherty, M.Menshikova, C.Eng and R.Smithies, ‘A Luohan
belong to the so-called fahua 琺華 group of glazes (the precise from Yixian in the Hermitage Museum: Some Parallels in Material
etymology of fahua 琺華 remains unclear). These are based Usage with the Longquanwu and Liuliqu Kilns near Beijing’,
on complex metal oxide compounds, and were introduced to Bulletin of Chinese Ceramic Art and Archaeology No.6, Beijing,
China from the Middle East during the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). December 2015, pp.34-35).
Fahua colours were later famously deployed together with sancai
colours in the polychrome dragon-screen walls of the Ming. In these lions particular skill would have been employed in modelling
re-entrant areas such as mouths, or the enclosed areas of limbs and
The size, modelling and glaze quality of these lions invites lower abdomen, all with adequate support and internal ventilation
attention. Large glazed ceramic works of this kind belong to during air-drying and for escape of steam in firing. In both lions a
a group of objects for which, from the Yuan dynasty onwards, vent-hole was left behind the mouth at the throat, in the lioness

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