publication:
A Dealer's Hand: The Chinese Art World through the Eyes of Giuseppe Eskenazi, 2012, p. 294, plate 298
This lot is in bonded status.
remark:
· Eskenazzi, London
· Sotheby's Hong Kong, 26 October 1993, lot 36
· Sotheby's Hong Kong, 2 may 2005, lot 641
· North American Ten-Sided Lingbi Mountain Residence Collection, no. EK287
The firing of qinghua began in the Gongxian kiln of the Tang Dynasty and matured in the Jingdezhen kiln of the Yuan Dynasty. The Yuan Dynasty as an important period in the history of Chinese ceramics, due to the limited historical documents and heirlooms, has not been valued for a long time, until the end of the 1950s, the American scholar John Pope combined with the Yuan zhizheng eleventh year blue and white vase collected in the British Daweide Art Foundation and the Yuan Qinghua objects hidden in Turkey and Iran, put forward the so-called "zhizheng" theory, the appearance of the yuanqinghua was established, and was valued by the world. Yuan qinghua is made of Persian cobalt material, blue and white hair color, diverse shapes, rich ornamentation, with decorative multi-level layout as a typical feature.
In the fifteenth year of the Yuan Dynasty, the Fuliang Porcelain Bureau of Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, was established, and the imperial use and reward of porcelain for export in the inner government were all produced by it, and later saw the example of the Raozhou official "Mengzhi Doutao", and it was called "Imperial Soil Kiln". Under Mongol rule, porcelain was encouraged to revolutionize the old and the new, so as to meet domestic demand and export sales, and achieve the exquisite and colorful yuan porcelain. On the basis of the solid technique of white glazed porcelain, and with a stable supply of cobalt materials, the artist can paint blue and white porcelain as much as he wants. The shape of this vessel is simple, the shape is large, the momentum is majestic, and it is highly sought after by the Yuan Dynasty clan, the Mongolian great powers, Central Asia, and the Islamic regions.
The birth of this type of dragon pattern large pot is closely related to the drinking customs of the Yuan Dynasty. During the Mongolian Yuan Period, China strengthened its exchanges with The countries of West Asia, learned and absorbed the distilled liquor technology introduced from the Arab region, and soon spread throughout the country, which was an epoch-making change in the history of Chinese wine production, this kind of distilled wine derived from the Middle East technology "Ashigi" distilled wine belongs to the Yuan Dynasty aristocratic class consumption of fine wine, from the imperial relatives and nobles, bureaucrats and doctors; down to the common people. Different classes have different drinking customs. The royal court drank lavishly, the etiquette was cumbersome and cumbersome, and the drinking utensils were exquisite and magnificent. Zhu Derun, a scholar of the late Yuan Dynasty, wrote in "The Endowment of the Rolling Mill": "Today's grand gift is the rolling mill", and "the rolling machine" is a different translation of "Araji". At present, many Yuan Dynasty cellars have been excavated in China, all of which are based on gold and silver or porcelain wine utensils as the bulk of the excavated relics, reflecting that drinking was one of the most important activities in the daily life of the Mongolian nobles and semu people at that time, especially the upper class drank heavily, drinking became a common practice, naturally attaching importance to the storage of wine and the refinement of drinking utensils, so various materials of wine utensils naturally became a must-have for the upper class of society at that time. At the same time, due to the general increase in the amount of drinking, the need for larger and removable storage tools to meet the needs of home use, so this type of large tank came into being.
The number of Yuan Qinghua is very rare, and such a large instrument is even more rare to see. This piece of blue and white jar is straight mouth, slippery shoulder, lower convergence, stable shape and heavy gas. Through the upper and lower four layers of ornamentation: sea wave pattern, tangled lotus pattern, cloud dragon pattern and deformed lotus petal pattern, the composition is complex but not chaotic, the layers are clear, and the view is pleasing to the eye. The abdomen is themed ornamentation, the double dragon is flowing and flexible, the body is healthy and curved, and the auspicious clouds around the dragon body set off the vigorous, free and majestic trend of the double dragon; the shin part bears ten petals of the lotus pattern, filled with weeping cloud patterns and dripping bead patterns, leaving gaps between the lotus petals, dense and dense. The overall brushwork is free and bold, the blue and white color is green and beautiful, just like the solemn blend of ink, quite interesting to the pen and ink, the characteristics of the process of the times are distinct; the blue and white hair color is bright and gorgeous, the thick place has black crystal spots, and the light place is faint and natural. The carcass is thick and heavy, the bottom of the device is exposed, and there are obvious traces of spiral patterns in the tire making, and there are part of the glaze cover hanging on the tire, flowing naturally. The glaze is applied inside and outside, the glaze color is white with blue, and the glaze shows the blue color of duck eggs, which is a typical glaze color of Jingdezhen porcelain in the Yuan Dynasty.
The dragon pattern painted on the abdomen of the tank body is free and unrestrained, dynamic posture, slender and powerful body, its angry eyes, fish scales, sharp blade-like dragon fins, eagle-shaped finger claws and other characteristics, are very similar to the dragon pattern on the Yuan Dynasty dragon pattern jade pot spring vase excavated from the Yuan Dynasty tomb on the west side of the Qingzhou Grain Transit Depot Railway in Qingzhou City, Shandong Province, all of which belong to the typical Yuan Dynasty dragon pattern style, and are also found in the Yuan Dynasty cellar excavations in Gao'an, Jiangxi and sir David's old collection of pairs of blue and white offering bottles, now in the British Museum in London, which can be compared.
According to statistics, there are about 110 pieces of yuanqinghua lost overseas, mainly in Turkey, Iran and other countries in the Middle East. There are about 200 pieces in the domestic collection, most of which have been excavated by archaeology in various places after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Yuan Qinghua occupies a prominent position in the history of Chinese ceramics, and its emergence changed the situation of a hundred schools of worship in the northern and southern kiln farms during the Two Song Dynasties, and opened up the situation in which Jingdezhen flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Compared with Ming and Qing dynasty official kiln porcelain, Yuan Qinghua rarely appears in the market, and the standing large vessel with such a typical style is more rare and can be encountered but not sought.
Looking at the transaction records of the world's major auction companies in the past decade, only a few cases of similar products can be found. One example is Christie's Hong Kong, No. 629 on 27 October 2003, which is now in the collection of the Gathold's TianminLou Foundation in Hong Kong, setting a record for the highest auction of Yuan Blue and White porcelain at that time. Another example is similar to the ornamentation of this product, released from Sotheby's Hong Kong, 2 May 2000, No. 650. See also a spring example of a dragon-patterned jade pot, from a prominent source, once collected by Cocoon Mountain LongquanTang, Lan Jieli, Mei Yin Tang, etc., released from Sotheby's Hong Kong, April 7, 2011, No. 0038.
Remember the yuan qinghua water wave dragon pattern large pot smoke cloud record
Huang Ji
Member of the Oriental Ceramics Society of London
In ancient Chinese ceramics, the dragon jar is always an important artifact that attracts people's attention, whether it is the Yuan Dynasty or Yongle Xuande. The first time I saw this jar was the main auction of sotheby's cover in Hong Kong in 1993, and the can was finally bid for Eskenazi.
There is nothing special about this tank type, only the dragon pattern is special. The body of the jar is painted with a dragon, the dragon's head is huge, the dragon's body is thick, the limbs are strong, the claws are four claws, and the dragon's tail is flame-like. Dragon scales are colored in a smeared manner, which is significantly different from other Yuan Dynasty dragon pattern vessels. Prior to 1993, it was known that such pots depicting dragon scales in a smeared style were in the collections of the Tokyo National Museum of Art and the Izumi Museum of Art, Japan. But these two dragon jars, the dragon pattern painting is different from this jar. The one in Tokyo is too literary, and the one that shines out is even more similar to the famous David bottle.
In fact, two years earlier, in 1991, Sotheby's Hong Kong had launched a Yuan Dragon Jar, which depicted a dragon pattern similar to that of the IzumiTsu Museum. At that time, I remembered that Mr. Geng Baochang and Mr. Feng Xianming had made a special trip to Hong Kong to check it out. The jar was later auctioned at Christie's in Hong Kong. In 2017, he was exhibited at the special exhibition "Heung Kong Art Collection" at Shoubo. In 1997, Sotheby's Hong Kong introduced a dragon pattern jar with a lotus lid, which is similar to the IzumiTsu Museum of Art. In addition, the great collector Xu Qiming also has one in his possession, which was exhibited at Zhejiang Expo in 2007.
Domestic public museums collect this kind of dragon scales in the style of smearing, counting two from the Guobo and Zhenjiang Museums, all of which are excavated artifacts. The difference is that the two tanks are painted with double dragons.
The above artifacts basically present the painting style of the dragon pot in the Yuan Dynasty. However, in the dragon pattern painting style, it is still our theme today, and the Yuan Dragon Jar that appears in Poly this time is the most special. It was twenty-eight years since Poly launched the Su Ji this one, and it has been twenty-eight years since it first appeared, and then I see that the true way has been lost for a long time.
The tank is smooth, open, shoulder-lengthened, bulging, and introverted belly. The outside of the jar is applied with a white glaze, although the glaze is slightly thin, but it shows a clear feeling of milky opacity, and the body of the jar is painted with a magnificent shore dragon with thick blue flowers. Supplemented by lotus flowers, clouds and other common ornaments of meta-porcelain. The tank is spliced into pieces, and there are obvious splicing marks in the tank. Each segment, if you look closely, has a symmetrical and faint string pattern under the glaze. Some people may ask, such as according to the process, modern imitations can be completely achieved. How to distinguish between modern Jingdezhen high imitation and authenticity? An important trait is that the number of genuine segments and the position of the tire are very exquisite. The chord patterns in each segment are very delicate. The fetal bone is also delicate and the tire color is white. Even if the tread is yellowed at the bottom foot, it is caused by long-term exposed tire oxidation. If the core of the fetal bone is looked at at the fetal bone fracture, it is still a delicate pulp white.
The interior of the jar is also glazed with basically full glaze. The inside of the jar is glazed so that the utensils are not deformed in the high temperature firing of the kiln. Although there are phenomena such as flow glaze, uneven glaze application, and partial unsprayment, in general, the inside of the jar is still very elaborate, and it is made with the best effect that can be achieved at that time. On the other hand, the imitation, the fetal bone is rough, the number of segments, the position of the tire is chaotic, the pulling pattern is either not absent or too dense, and the drawing marks are rough. In particular, the tire markings are deliberately highlighted and the glaze that imitates the flow inside the jar. Such details must be discerned in detail in the actual market and in the debate of falsification.
In addition to the shape of the jar and the glazing process, the blue and white hair color is also particularly important. Let's take a closer look at poly's jar, because it represents dragon scales in a smeared way, so when we look at this jar for the first time, our eyes will focus on the most concentrated part of the blue and white, that is, the dragon body. We will find that although its blue and white flowers are colored in a smear style, the blue flowers have a certain level and color scale, not a single color scale. Particularly thick parts are bluish-black, and lighter parts are royal blue. The halos and dots in the blue flowers behave naturally. Where the blue flowers are most concentrated, the blue flowers have the feeling of penetrating into the fetal bone through the glaze. These qualities are consistent with the specimens I have seen. On the other hand, imitations deliberately show scattered small spots and heavy pens showing heavy parts, which appear regular and unnatural. And these features are consistent with the specimens I have seen. Therefore, in the very important blue and white characteristics, Poly's dragon jar is very "standard".
Finally, let's discuss the Dragon Head. I have repeatedly mentioned in the previous article that the special significance of this jar lies in the dragon head painting method. It is obviously different from other jars. In summary, there are the following qualities:
First, the overall proportion of the dragon's head is huge
Second, there is a clear sense of bone, that is, through the picture, it is as if there is a skull in the dragon's head. The frontal bone is full, and the nose, upper and lower cheeks have a bone feeling.
Third, the teeth are special, the four larval teeth are rounded and blunt, not like other dragon patterns, and only one canine tooth (that is, fangs)
Fourth, the lower part has a masculine dragon whisker of uneven length, which echoes the horns of the dragon, making the dragon's head particularly angry
Why is this tank dragon head behaving so differently? In my opinion, it is the style that is most loyal to the Song painting dragon pattern. For example, let's compare this jar with the dragon diagram drawn by Chen Rong in the Southern Song Dynasty, it is not difficult to find that this jar wants to express the spirit of the dragon, but it is directly chasing Chen Rong, and there is obvious admiration for the Song style. Because there was no strict distinction between officials and the people in the kiln affairs of the Yuan Dynasty, the management of burning magnets and painting patterns was not as strict as that of the Ming and Qing Imperial Kiln Factories. In fact, it was the Han Chinese who painted and burned the kiln. Therefore, it is not excluded that the literati Gao Shi at that time, in order to follow the rhyme of the Southern Song Dynasty, asked people to imitate and copy Chen Rong's handwriting, or use Chen Rong's painting as a reference to design the painting.
Throughout this jar, whether in the shape, tire, glaze, blue and white, bottom foot, painting, it represents the best expression of kiln affairs and art at that time. Its firing background deserves further study. In the whole meta-magnetic tank and other utensils, if it is compared and promoted, this tank is undoubtedly judged to be first class.
Lot information
LOT No. 5045 Artwork Name Yuan Qinghua Water Wave Cloud Dragon Tangled Lotus Pattern Large Jar
Author -- Dimensions 33 cm in diameter; 27.5 cm in height
Estimate 12,000,000-22,000,000 Transaction price RMB 34,500,000