Period:Ming dynasty Production date:1573-1620 (circa)
Materials:porcelain
Technique:glazed
Subjects:crustacean fish leaf lotus
Dimensions:Height: 18 centimetres
Description:
Porcelain ewer in the form of a crayfish decorated in ‘sancai’ enamels on the biscuit. This ewer is in the form of a crayfish emerging from the crest of a wave, holding a spout which terminates in a lotus leaf between its legs. It has an eight-lobed dish mouth and curved handle attached at its back, and a single fish emerges from the waves on either side. The flared foot has a flat base. The ewer is decorated with ‘sancai’ overglaze enamels – green, yellow and aubergine -on the biscuit.
IMG
![图片[1]-ewer BM-1931-0717.1-China Archive](https://chinaarchive.net/Ming dynasty/Ceramics/mid_00272435_001.jpg)
Comments:Harrison-Hall 2001:This type of ewer was probably used in a domestic Chinese context for pouring wine and was also sold to customers in South-east Asia where animal-shaped ewers had been popular for some time. Ming ceramics were preserved in Indonesia over the centuries and as late as the end of the Second World War, in 1945, almost identical crayfish ewers were used as ritual objects among the Kelabits and Muruts people of the far uplands in the interior of northern Sarawak, and Kalimantan in Borneo, Indonesia. Such ewers were used there for ‘borak’ [rice wine] in ceremonies associated with crop fertility and head-hunting. Some of these ewers were later purchased for the Sarawak Museum.Another similar example is in the Hainhofer Cabinet at Upsala, Sweden, which formed part of a collection completed in ad 1628. There is another ewer in the Dresden Collection which ‘can be traced in Saxon hands as far back as the sixteenth century’. The presence of similar examples in such early inventoried European collections provides us with a ‘terminus post quem’. Since R. L. Hobson’s time further research has established that ewers in the form of phoenix or carp were inventoried for the Elector of Saxony in 1590, recorded as a gift in 1579-80 from the Medici Grand Duke of Florence.An identical example is in the Baur Collection, Geneva, and a further example is in the Lee Kong Chian Art Museum, National University of Singapore. Variations on this type of ewer, with carp in place of the crayfish, are also known, while complete examples of both carp and crayfish ewers are in a private collection in Morotai, Halmahera, Indonesia.
Materials:porcelain
Technique:glazed
Subjects:crustacean fish leaf lotus
Dimensions:Height: 18 centimetres
Description:
Porcelain ewer in the form of a crayfish decorated in ‘sancai’ enamels on the biscuit. This ewer is in the form of a crayfish emerging from the crest of a wave, holding a spout which terminates in a lotus leaf between its legs. It has an eight-lobed dish mouth and curved handle attached at its back, and a single fish emerges from the waves on either side. The flared foot has a flat base. The ewer is decorated with ‘sancai’ overglaze enamels – green, yellow and aubergine -on the biscuit.
IMG
Comments:Harrison-Hall 2001:This type of ewer was probably used in a domestic Chinese context for pouring wine and was also sold to customers in South-east Asia where animal-shaped ewers had been popular for some time. Ming ceramics were preserved in Indonesia over the centuries and as late as the end of the Second World War, in 1945, almost identical crayfish ewers were used as ritual objects among the Kelabits and Muruts people of the far uplands in the interior of northern Sarawak, and Kalimantan in Borneo, Indonesia. Such ewers were used there for ‘borak’ [rice wine] in ceremonies associated with crop fertility and head-hunting. Some of these ewers were later purchased for the Sarawak Museum.Another similar example is in the Hainhofer Cabinet at Upsala, Sweden, which formed part of a collection completed in ad 1628. There is another ewer in the Dresden Collection which ‘can be traced in Saxon hands as far back as the sixteenth century’. The presence of similar examples in such early inventoried European collections provides us with a ‘terminus post quem’. Since R. L. Hobson’s time further research has established that ewers in the form of phoenix or carp were inventoried for the Elector of Saxony in 1590, recorded as a gift in 1579-80 from the Medici Grand Duke of Florence.An identical example is in the Baur Collection, Geneva, and a further example is in the Lee Kong Chian Art Museum, National University of Singapore. Variations on this type of ewer, with carp in place of the crayfish, are also known, while complete examples of both carp and crayfish ewers are in a private collection in Morotai, Halmahera, Indonesia.
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