Period:Yuan dynasty Production date:1330-1368 (circa)
Materials:porcelain
Technique:glazed, underglazed,
Subjects:bird phoenix leaf bell shell,flower fruit sea animal flaming jewel kirin dragon lotus
Dimensions:Height: 48 centimetres
Description:
Large guan wine jar decorated in underglaze blue with broken side handles and crackled glaze. Similar to BM 1960.0728.1 in shape, main decoration and registers, this impressive jar has an ovoid body, a dish mouth with a substantial repair to one side, a ridge around the shoulders and a raised band at the base of the short neck. Applied on either side were handles in the form of carp dragons which are now broken and missing. It stands on a broad foot ring and has an unglazed base. Underglaze blue motifs are arranged in seven bands. Around the mouth is a border of overlapping roundels containing six-petalled flowers in hexagonal frames. The neck is decorated with a composite flower scroll of four paired blooms -daylilies, lotus, peonies and chrysanthemums – and one singleton. Beneath this, around the shoulders, repeated on the back, are a qilin and a phoenix looking back at each other over a lotus scroll ground. Below is a ring of inverted lappets framing twenty auspicious emblems. These may be identified as a conch shell, pomegranate, flaming pearl, lotus, artemisia leaf, mirror, lingzhi, rhombus, flaming pearl, pomegranate, coral, rhinoceros horn, lingzhi, ingots, a bell, pomegranate, twin fish, Tai Hu rock (a type of rock with natural holes, from Lake Tai in Jiangsu province), lingzhi and scrolls. The main band shows a bold peony scroll with six giant blooms viewed from the side and above. This is followed by a band of classic scroll and, around the foot, lappets with inverted lotus flowers. The cobalt blue is much stronger and the decoration less blurred than in BM 1960.0728.1.
IMG
![图片[1]-guan; wine-jar BM-1963-0520.1-China Archive](https://chinaarchive.net/Yuan dynasty/Ceramics/mid_00261113_001.jpg)
Comments:A quantity of Chinese material from the Cummins Collection was purchased from Philip Cummins (the collector’s son) by a Mr Richard Hobart ‘of Massachusetts’ who donated one piece to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard and lent seven or eight pieces to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Gray 1967, 22 and MacPherson 1994, 118). Other material from the Cummins collection was bought by a Mrs Gross of Montreal and a number of other pieces kept by Mr J. Z. Pelland of Sherbrooke, Quebec, vendor in 1962 of the fifteen examples in the BM (MacPherson 1994, 117) . Harrison-Hall 2001:The blue employed and the brown crackle lend the jar an unusual appearance which has lead some scholars to suggest that it was made in Vietnam. Many copies of Chinese blue-and-white designs were made there in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but this jar is certainly a product of the Jingdezhen kilns. Most Yuan blue-and-white wares use a ‘heaped and piled’ cobalt which fires almost black in some places and pale blue in others and is covered with tiny dots. On the present piece the blue does not appear ‘heaped and piled’; instead it is rather flat – a consistent heavy dark blue – and the blue-tinged white glaze which might be expected is in fact crackled. Both the crazing and the flat blue colour are a result of this jar’s being caught in a fire in the Cummins family home in 1955. Originally the jar was collected in India by William Cummins, a railway engineer who worked on the Bombay-Calcutta line between 1864 and 1883 and who later retired to Canada. Much of Cummins’ collection came from the Kings of Oudh. Some 600 pieces survived from this collection, but the fire brought the numbers down to 200 intact from which in 1963 a selection was purchased for the British Museum.
Materials:porcelain
Technique:glazed, underglazed,
Subjects:bird phoenix leaf bell shell,flower fruit sea animal flaming jewel kirin dragon lotus
Dimensions:Height: 48 centimetres
Description:
Large guan wine jar decorated in underglaze blue with broken side handles and crackled glaze. Similar to BM 1960.0728.1 in shape, main decoration and registers, this impressive jar has an ovoid body, a dish mouth with a substantial repair to one side, a ridge around the shoulders and a raised band at the base of the short neck. Applied on either side were handles in the form of carp dragons which are now broken and missing. It stands on a broad foot ring and has an unglazed base. Underglaze blue motifs are arranged in seven bands. Around the mouth is a border of overlapping roundels containing six-petalled flowers in hexagonal frames. The neck is decorated with a composite flower scroll of four paired blooms -daylilies, lotus, peonies and chrysanthemums – and one singleton. Beneath this, around the shoulders, repeated on the back, are a qilin and a phoenix looking back at each other over a lotus scroll ground. Below is a ring of inverted lappets framing twenty auspicious emblems. These may be identified as a conch shell, pomegranate, flaming pearl, lotus, artemisia leaf, mirror, lingzhi, rhombus, flaming pearl, pomegranate, coral, rhinoceros horn, lingzhi, ingots, a bell, pomegranate, twin fish, Tai Hu rock (a type of rock with natural holes, from Lake Tai in Jiangsu province), lingzhi and scrolls. The main band shows a bold peony scroll with six giant blooms viewed from the side and above. This is followed by a band of classic scroll and, around the foot, lappets with inverted lotus flowers. The cobalt blue is much stronger and the decoration less blurred than in BM 1960.0728.1.
IMG
Comments:A quantity of Chinese material from the Cummins Collection was purchased from Philip Cummins (the collector’s son) by a Mr Richard Hobart ‘of Massachusetts’ who donated one piece to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard and lent seven or eight pieces to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Gray 1967, 22 and MacPherson 1994, 118). Other material from the Cummins collection was bought by a Mrs Gross of Montreal and a number of other pieces kept by Mr J. Z. Pelland of Sherbrooke, Quebec, vendor in 1962 of the fifteen examples in the BM (MacPherson 1994, 117) . Harrison-Hall 2001:The blue employed and the brown crackle lend the jar an unusual appearance which has lead some scholars to suggest that it was made in Vietnam. Many copies of Chinese blue-and-white designs were made there in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but this jar is certainly a product of the Jingdezhen kilns. Most Yuan blue-and-white wares use a ‘heaped and piled’ cobalt which fires almost black in some places and pale blue in others and is covered with tiny dots. On the present piece the blue does not appear ‘heaped and piled’; instead it is rather flat – a consistent heavy dark blue – and the blue-tinged white glaze which might be expected is in fact crackled. Both the crazing and the flat blue colour are a result of this jar’s being caught in a fire in the Cummins family home in 1955. Originally the jar was collected in India by William Cummins, a railway engineer who worked on the Bombay-Calcutta line between 1864 and 1883 and who later retired to Canada. Much of Cummins’ collection came from the Kings of Oudh. Some 600 pieces survived from this collection, but the fire brought the numbers down to 200 intact from which in 1963 a selection was purchased for the British Museum.
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