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
14.
A TWO-COLOR GLAZED STONEWARE EWER
WITH APPLIQUÉ DECORATION
Tang Dynasty, A.D. 9th Century
from the kilns at Changsha, Hunan province, applied on the exterior of the almost spherical body with three relief-moulded ‘Silk Road’ style plaques, including two depicting bearded foreign musicians dressed in elaborate costumes and high boots, one playing an hour-glass shaped drum hung from his waist and the other with a set of clappers, flanking a third moulded plaque of a pair of birds and fruiting date-palms rising above a lattice-patterned balustrade, the steeply rounded shoulders surmounted by a short cylindrical neck rising to a wide mouth with rolled-out lip rim, and applied with two tripled-stranded lug handles on either side above the figural plaques, the arched loop handle at the back also triple-stranded and applied high on the shoulder opposite the short upward-angled faceted spout, the pale yellowish celadon glaze generously applied all over and embellished with iron-brown splashes on the three appliqué plaques, the glaze showing a wide mesh of crackle and continuing down to the wedge-shaped edge of the flat base which is left unglazed revealing the buff-colored clay.
Height 7 1⁄2 inches (19 cm)
Compare the Changsha ewer of similar form decorated with musicians, excavated in 1954 from a tomb dated to A.D. 812, Shijiazhuang, Hunan province, illustrated in Kaogu, 1984, No. 3, p. 283, fig. 1.
Compare also the Changsha ewer of the more common wide-neck form, with plain palm leaf medallions on the straight sides of the elongated body, in the Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco Museum of Art, illustrated by d’Argencé in Chinese Ceramics in the Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco, 1967, pl. XIX:A. Another Changsha ewer of the same wide-neck form is in the Cleveland Museum of Art, with medallions depicting a pair of birds flanking fruit clusters, is illustrated by Mino and Tsiang, Ice and Green Clouds: Traditions of Chinese Celadon, Indianapolis, 1986, p. 120, no. 43. The authors go on to cite other examples excavated from various kiln sites at Changsha, Hunan of similar form but decorated with many different appliqué motifs.
唐 長沙窯青釉褐斑貼花壺 高 19 厘米
