Page 100 - Sothebys Important Chinese Art 09/13/17

HALCYON DAYS
REFLECTED IN
POTTERY
REGINA KRAHL
The early Tang dynasty (618-907) is unparalleled in the
baroque opulence of its works of art, which runs through all
media. It was a time when Chinese emperors surpassed each
other in the display of luxuries, and when ostentatious works of
art in gold, silver, tortoise shell, mother-of-pearl, foreign glass
and other valuable materials were in use at court. While only
few of those works have survived – outside the Shōsō-in of the
Tōdai-ji in Nara, the storehouse which preserves some of the
personal belongings of the Japanese Emperor Shōmu (r. 724-
749) – China’s sancai (‘three color’) wares provide a splendid
echo in pottery of the luxury world inhabited by the court and
the aristocracy and convey a vivid impression of the spirit of
the time.
The four Tang sancai vessels here assembled speak, each
in its own way, of the joie de vivre in the early Tang period, a
delight in ornamentation and color, a style developed to its
full maturity, when the inventiveness of the potters aimed at
pushing a medium to its limits. Their vast repertoire of shapes
and designs was inspired by metalwork, glass, textiles and any
other ne materials they encountered, and absorbed motifs
and design concepts that had arrived in China via the Silk Road
from Central Asia and lands further west.
When glazed pottery rst became popular for burial items in
the latter part of the Han dynasty (206 BC – AD 220), it was
horses, farm animals and birds, as well as practical items of
daily life, such as watch towers, grain stores, mills, wells, stoves, and amber inlays in plain lacquer or tortoise shell. Motifs such
looms, storage jars and incense burners, that were reproduced
in ceramic form, to provide the deceased symbolically with the
necessities – as then perceived – in the afterlife. In the period
between Han and Tang, when the country was divided and the
seat of China’s political power had shifted to the south, glazed
pottery, produced mainly in the north, became rare. When it
reappeared at the end of the Southern and Northern Dynasties
(420-589), in the Northern Qi period (550-577), it had funda-
mentally changed. Imported by Sogdian traders, whose art had
itself assimilated styles from Bactria further south and from
the Sassanian empire further west, it displayed completely
new aesthetics, ultimately derived from Hellenistic, Persian and
Indian art.
The adventure of this rich ornamentation had an overwhelm-
ing in uence on Chinese artisans who eagerly incorporated
new ideas and motifs into their own repertoire. In the Tang
dynasty, earthenware pottery adopted completely new styles
and functions, as purely practical considerations receded into
the background and gave way to ambitions to make ceramics
delectable. In the course of this development, pottery vessels,
originally only considered as humble replicas of more valu-
able goods, became works of art in their own right, original in
design and demanding in craftsmanship. Never did Chinese
potters create more luxurious and ingenious ceramics from
earthenware clay than at that period. There can be no doubt
that elaborate pieces such as the four vessels presented here
were expensive already at their time of production. Several
kilns seem to have been involved in the production of sancai
98 SOTHEBY’S
ceramics, but the Gongyi kilns in Gongxian, Henan province,
now appear as the most important, as the kiln site has yielded
evidence for the widest range of classic shapes, decorative
techniques and motifs.
Compared with Han prototypes, pottery also became richer
in color, mainly through the use of a white slip over the dull
beige clay, which not only brightened up the green and amber-
yellow glaze tones, but also – covered with a transparent
glaze – added a near-white glaze color to the repertoire and
thus gave rise to the sancai color scheme. Sancai from then on
became a staple in Chinese ceramics and remained popular
long after many additional glaze colors had become available.
It continued to be used until the end of China’s imperial past,
being gradually transferred from earthenware to stoneware and
eventually to porcelain.
Fluid forms, such as the squeezed mouth of the ewer, lot 77, the
applied knobs of clay on its handle, and the raised rings, par-
ticularly around its neck, were borrowed from Roman or Near
Eastern glass, which represented one of the particularly prized
foreign luxury goods.
Glazes with merging outlines, and motifs reserved in white in
a contrasting glaze, such as seen on the basin, lot 74, seem to
be imitating, in style and probably also in technique, wax-resist
textile designs. The e ect can be similar to the mother-of-pearl
as the central rosette on this piece are now known to have been
produced by impressing pottery stamps, examples of which
have been discovered at the Gongyi kiln site.
Applied palmettes, foliate and arabesque designs, motifs taken
from the animal and plant world, elements of Buddhist imagery
such as the ubiquitous lotus petals and pearl bands, as well
as apotropaic monster masks and medallions, as seen on the
two ewers, lots 75 and 77, and the rhyton, lot 76, had already
appeared on Northern Qi ceramics and were now translated, in
more stylish form, into the decorative language of Tang pottery.
They clearly allude to jewel-like encrustations or lush repoussé
motifs on metalwork. Granular relief surfaces, such as seen on
the green phoenix-head ewer and rhyton, are reminiscent of
the pearl beading favored in silver, but the way this pattern is
used here evokes even more strongly abundance in nature: on
the ewer, it is emerging from an outer hull that appears to have
split open, recalling a fruit bursting with seeds; while on the
rhyton, it appears to pour forth from a horn of plenty.
The rhyton in particular, which is styled like a cornucopia
over owing with riches, seems like a perfect symbol for the
plethora of opulence enjoyed and displayed by the ruling elite
in the rst half of the Tang period. This life style was radically
cut short through the rebellion of An Lushan in 755/6 which,
although ultimately unsuccessful, shook the dynasty to its core
and had a most sobering e ect on Tang society. It ended the
halcyon days that these pottery vessels seem to incarnate and
to preserve for posterity.