J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York

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Past Exhibition

Chinese Ceramics A.D. 400–1400:
Selections from an American Collection

March 19 - 31, 2007

21.
A LONGQUAN CELADON VASE

Southern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1127-1279)

with pear-shaped body and wide cylindrical neck rising to a shallow flared mouth with galleried lip, covered inside and out with a light bluish-green glaze of even tone, thinning to a slightly paler hue at the lip and pooling to a deeper bluish color inside the mouth, the glaze continuing over the flat base recessed within a high ring foot, the thin edge of the foot unglazed and the surface of the stoneware showing a dark purplish gray color.

Height 6 14 inches (15.9 cm)

A similar Longquan celadon vase excavated in 1963 from the tomb of Ren Xi Qing, with an epitaph dated to A.D. 1213, discovered at Wuchang, Hubei province and now in the Collection of the Hubei Provincial Museum is illustrated in Kaogu, 1964, No. 5, pl. 7, no. 5; and the same vase is illustrated by Zhu, Longquan Yao Qingci (Celadons from Longquan Kilns), Taipei, 1998, no. 109, p. 142.

Compare also the two similar Longquan celadon vases illustrated by Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyingtang Collection, Vol. One, London, 1994, nos. 554 and 555, p. 296, both from the Collections of Mrs. Alfred Clark and Edward T. Chow, where the author discusses the dark color of the exposed edge of the thin footrim of no. 554, caused by the application of an iron-rich wash to simulate the darker body of guan wares. The present example shows the same characteristics.

Another Longquan celadon vase of this form in the Musée Guimet, Paris, from the Michel Calmann Collection, was exhibited at the National History Museum in Taipei and illustrated in the catalogue entitled Terre de Neige, de Glace, et d’Ombre: Quatorze siècles d’histoire de la ceramique chinoise à travers les collections du Musée Guimet, Taipei, 1999, no. 33; and a similar vase is illustrated by Gyllensvärd, Chinese Ceramics in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1964, no. 96, p. 50.