J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York
MenuPast Exhibition
Early Chinese Ceramics: An American Private Collection
March 28 - April 16, 2005
43.
A GREEN-GLAZED POTTERY ‘BOY AND PHOENIX’ EWER
Song/Liao Dynasty, A.D. 11th-12th Century
the hollow moulded vessel in the form of a crested bird with a plump baby boy riding on its back, the boy wearing the traditional short tunic and with his hair in triple topknots, shown gazing intently straight ahead and grasping the fanned out feathers behind the bird’s head, the phoenix also with gaze fixed straight ahead and wings folded, raised on a short cylindrical support with wide rounded foot and deeply recessed base, the narrow tubular spout held in the bird’s hooked beak and the rising tail feathers surmounted by a flaring funnel-shaped opening attached to the boy’s back, covered all over with a bright leaf-green glaze pooling darker in the recesses to accentuate the sculptural form, the interior base partially unglazed revealing the pale yellowish buff pottery body, the base of the footrim with thick droplets of glaze and three rough areas remaining from the kiln supports.
Height 7 1⁄4 inches (18.4 cm)
Compare the smaller Dingyao ewer moulded in the form of a boy riding on a chicken, excavated in 1971 from Chenmin, Dinggxian, Heibei province, illustrated in Zhongguo Taoci Quanji: Dingyao (Compendium of Chinese Ceramics: Ding Ware), Vol. 9, Kyoto, 1981, no. 97 and again in Zhongguo Taoci Quanji: Liao Xixia Jin (The Complete Works of Chinese Ceramics: Liao, Xixia and Jin Dynasties), Vol. 9, Shanghai, 2000, p. 171, no. 149.
Another smaller Dingyao ewer, moulded in the form of a young boy riding on a duck, in the collection of Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, is illustrated in Homage to Heaven, Homage to Earth - Chinese Treasures of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 1992, p. 61, pl. 28, right.
宋/遼 綠釉男童騎鳳壺 高 18.4 厘米
