wine-cup BM-1947-0712.160

Period:Yuan dynasty Production date:1320-1368 (circa)
Materials:porcelain
Technique:glazed, underglazed,
Subjects:fruit
Dimensions:Height: 3.20 centimetres Length: 9 centimetres

Description:
Wine cup in the form of a halved peach with underglaze red decoration. This small wine cup is fashioned in the form of a 蟠桃 pantao (halved peach) with attached stalk and leaves. The tip of the peach forms its spout and a looped stalk with two leaves resting on the upper rim acts as a handle. A naturalistic peach form is further suggested by a curved carved indentation from the base to the spout. The rim and inside are decorated with irregular splashes of underglaze copper red speckled with black and flecked with green. Such colour variation, while attractive, demonstrates the difficulties of firing copper pigment which turns green in oxidation and red in reduction firing. This cup has a flat unglazed base on which it was fired.
IMG


Comments:Harrison-Hall 2001:A slightly smaller (length 8.1 cm) peach-shaped wine cup covered with a qingbai glaze was recovered from the Sinan shipwreck, datable to 1323. Underglaze copper red was first used to decorate porcelain at Jingdezhen in the Yuan era and the earliest excavated examples unearthed to date were made in the middle Yuan in 1338. Although from the body material, decoration and shape we know that this wine cup was made in the middle Yuan, its form is based on earlier metal-work prototypes. A gilded silver cup with a maker’s mark in the form of a halved peach with incised decoration and a slightly more elaborate stalk-and-leaf handle was excavated from a Song dynasty (960-1275) hoard in Pingqiao, Liyang county, southern Jiangsu. This silver cup bears four characters in the centre which read 寿比蟠桃 ‘shou bi pan tao’ (May you live as long as the peaches of immortality). According to Chinese legend, the peaches of immortality grow in the garden of the goddess Xi Wang Mu (Queen Mother of the West), ruler of the paradise realm of the immortals. These fruits ripen once every thousand years. Consumption of peaches from her orchard bestowed eternal life. A popular legend recorded in Xi Youji (The Journey to the West) attributed to Wu Cheng’en (c. 1500-82) tells of greedy Monkey who barged his way into the orchard at the goddess’ palace and scoffed all the magic peaches, leaving none for the delectation of the invited guests who could only look on in misery at the trees stripped bare of fruit. One may speculate that the peach-shaped cup was given as a birthday present to wish the recipient long life.Halved peaches not only made fine models for wine cups but were also suitable for use as brush washers. At least two peach-shaped brush washers decorated in splashed underglaze red have been excavated from Yuan contexts in the Philippines. These have attachments of a peach and a bird respectively, modelled in the round and similarly decorated. A larger peach-shaped washer carved from green jade (measuring 11X6 cm) was excavated in 1960 from the Yuan dynasty tomb of Qian Yu in Dafouxiang, Wuxi, Jiangsu province.