Tang Dynasty (618-907)
Height: 33 cm
Provenance
Private Collection, New York
Weisbrod Chinese Art, Ltd.
Jerome Krieger Collection, New York
Published
Chinese Works of Art, Spring, 1998, Weisbrod Chinese Art, Ltd., No. 10
Opulence and Desire, The Tang Dynasty, Spring 2005, Weisbrod Chinese Art
Ltd., New York, catalogue No. 15
Exhibition
Chinese Works of Art, Spring, 1998, Weisbrod Chinese Art, Ltd., No. 10
Opulence and Desire, The Tang Dynasty, Spring 2005, Weisbrod Chinese Art
Ltd., New York, Catalogue No. 15
The Museum Pusat, Jakarta has an almost identical ewer, which is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, Vol. 3, no. 30.
The pottery ewer is of a flattened pear shape, surmounted by a slender neck and phoenix head just below the mouth rim. The C-form handle terminates with scrolls and is joined to the back of the phoenix head and to the shoulder of the vase. Each side has a molded cartouche, on one side enclosing a phoenix, the other an equestrian archer amidst a landscape decorating the body above a high flaring foot. The entire body is covered in a clear straw glaze of slight greenish tint.
Sancai ewers are illustrated in several publications. One excavated in Luoyang is illustrated in Luoyang Tang Sancai, pt. 98 and published in Historic Relics Unearthed in New China, pl. 150.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited a similar ewer in its exhibition, Spirit and Ritual. from the Morse collection, catalogue no. 53. William Willetts illustrates another ewer from the Museum of Science, Buffalo in Foundation of Chinese Art from Neolithic Pottery to Modern Architecture, no. 169. Included in the Exhibition of Treasures from the Shanghai Museum. San Francisco, 1983, catalogue no. 70 is a similar ewer dated to the Tang Dynasty.