ewer
- Museum number
- Franks.748.a
- Description
-
Porcelain ewer with heart-shaped panels and underglaze blue decoration. This ewer has a dish-shaped mouth, flattened pear-shaped body with relief panels in the form of upside-down hearts on either side, a slightly flared raised foot ring, faceted square-section spout and tapering handle with ribbed edges and a broken attachment for a cover. The join between the two sections of the body is quite clear and the whole piece is covered with a blue-tinged glaze which has crackled and discoloured. Painted under the glaze, in the heart-shaped panels, is a bearded old man with tied-back hair and a long robe, seated in contemplation beneath a willow tree, and on the other side a similar figure, possibly the same man, is shown in a moonlit landscape. The neck is decorated with bejewelled swags and a border of dots and crossed lozenges beneath a ring of feathery plantain leaves, the restored spout with flaming pearls. The edges of the mouth, heart-shaped panels and base of the spout are further painted with double lines. The base is glazed.
- Production date
- 1436-1456
- Dimensions
-
Height: 20.50 centimetres
-
Length: 14 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Harrison-Hall 2001:
Raised heart-shaped panels were introduced in the Yongle era, as evidenced by a ewer and a vase with 'tianbai' [sweet-white] glaze excavated in the early Yongle stratum of the imperial factory at Zhushan, Jingdezhen, in 1983 and 1984 respectively. However, the style of painting on the present ewer suggests a later date in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. Beaded gadroons, possibly derived from Tibetan paintings of deities, were painted in underglaze blue to decorate covered jars at the lmperial kilns in the Xuande era, but the gadroons here are simplified with only four pendant tassels, suggesting a later date in the Zhengtong to Jingtai period. The shape of the ewer derives from metal work and was unknown in porcelain before the early fifteenth century. A tin ewer of similar form with a domed cover with a lotus-bud finial, now in the Jiangsu Provincial Museum, Nanjing, was excavated from a Jingtai period tomb dated in accordance with 1456.
Paintings of scholarly figures isolated in landscape settings, painted in a sketchy feathery style referred to as the 'windswept' painting style, were popular in the mid fifteenth century. This academic-narrative style of ink painting, which began in the Song dynasty, led to the Zhe Painting School in the Ming period. A porcelain shard showing two figures painted in a similar style was excavated from the Zhengtong to Tianshun strata at Zhushan in Jingdezhen. Such figural painting on porcelain can be seen as part of a tradition established in the Yuan era at Jingdezhen and continued into the Qing dynasty.
- Location
- Not on display
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- Franks.748.a
