J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York
MenuPast Exhibition
The Gordon Collection:
Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art
March 12 - April 4, 2009
1.
A SMALL WHITE PORCELAIN FLASK
Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907)
modelled after a traveller’s leather canteen of bulging bag shape gathered at the top by a double-shield-shaped flap edged with mock stitching and ring-fasteners applied over the tapered crest and bridged by a high loop handle rising from a pleated “tail” at one end and terminating beside a short cylindrical spout at the other end, applied with a tassel hanging down from a studded collar around the base of the spout, and with long projecting “stitched” borders over the pinched seams around the perimeters of the two wide sides, covered on the exterior with a shiny transparent glaze which pools to a glassy pale-bluish tone in the recesses, the flat base left unglazed revealing the white porcelain body unevenly fired to pale tan-brown over part of the surface.
Height 5 inches (12.7 cm)
A small Tang white porcelain flask of very similar form with plain sides in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Gugong Bowuyuan Cang Wenwu Zhenpin Quanji: Jin Tang Ciqi (The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Porcelain of the Jin and Tang Dynasties), Vol. 31, Hong Kong, 1996, no. 88, pp. 98-99, and the same flask is illustrated again in Qiannian Xing Yao (Xing Kiln in its Millenium), Beijing, 2007, p. 155. A larger and more elaborate Tang white porcelain flask of closely related form, decorated with similar designs executed using the same techniques as are seen on the Gordon flask, excavated in 1996 at Gucheng, Hebei province, is illustrated on the cover of the same book, with additional illustrations and summary information, op. cit, pp. 156-157.
Compare also the small Tang white porcelain flask of similar form with incised decoration in the Illustrated Catalogue of Sung Dynasty Porcelain in the National Palace Museum, Ting Ware and Ting-Type Ware, Taipei, 1973, pl. 7.
唐 白瓷皮囊壺 高 12.7 厘米