guan; wine-jar BM-1937-0716.79

Period:Ming dynasty Production date:1457-1464
Materials:porcelain
Technique:glazed, underglazed,
Subjects:bird equestrian bamboo attendant landscape scholar
Dimensions:Diameter: 36 centimetres Height: 34 centimetres

Description:
Large porcelain ‘guan’ wine jar with underglaze blue decoration. This large heavily potted wine jar has an ovoid body and a short neck with a thickened rim. Its unglazed base is recessed within a broad foot ring. Underglaze blue is used to depict a figural freeze around the body with a wave border below and above a band of flying cranes among ruyi clouds, alternately facing forwards and backwards. Encircling the neck is a design of trellis hatching over a ground of crosses and squares. A scholar-official with attendants is depicted watching from the upper storey of a pavilion as three horsemen with their servants approach. The building is a traditional Chinese structure with wooden pillars, open walls and a tiled roof with upturned eaves. Following Chinese painting convention, the servants are rendered on a smaller scale than their masters. Within the house one servant carries a ‘yuhuchun’ wine bottle, another points out the procession and a third waits half-hidden downstairs by the front door. The visiting officials are accompanied by a vanguard of two servants carrying respectively a sword, and a ‘qin’ [zither] wrapped in a textile cover. Three further attendants bring up the rear, one shouldering a pole which supports a picnic basket on either end, another shouldering a pole from which two covered wine jars are suspended and a third at the back carrying a basket. Auspicious plants such as the lingzhi, bamboo, pine and prunus grow along the path. The end of the scene is indicated by a bank of clouds.
IMG


Comments:Harrison-Hall 2001:The composition of this scene with a pavilion and immortal or historical figures in a landscape intermingled with banks of undulating clouds which are outlined in thick blue lines and then given depth with squiggly shading is typical of porcelains made in the Tianshun era. A number of such large jars are preserved in museum and private collections. A ‘guan’ jar of this type with identical borders of cross-hatching and cranes among clouds and with waves at the foot, showing immortals playing chess, is in the Palace Museum, Beijing. The sophisticated style of underglaze blue painting here suggests links to earlier painted ceramics. The wealth of detail, such as the different textures of horse trappings or tile arrangements within the house, would have been simplified or omitted in woodblock prints of this period. This painting style is similar to that of BM 1947.0712.192 and appears most frequently on large jars and meiping.