An extremely rare and important blue and white jar, guan Yuan dynasty

well potted with straight tapered sides rising to a high angular shoulder below a short cylindrical neck with slightly raised mouth rim, vividly painted in a deep and vibrant shades of cobalt blue around the body with a wide composite floral scroll above a cash diaper band within double lines and a band of upright lappets around the base, and below a band of pendant lappets containing the bajixiang around the shoulder, between double lines, and a classic wave band at the neck

Bluett and Sons, London, 1966.

Chugoku bijutsu 5000 nen ten, Osaka Municipal Museum, Osaka, 1966, cat.no. 4-65.
Gen matsu Min sho no sometsuke ten, Japan Ceramics Society, Osaka, 1967, cat.no. 7.
So Gen no bijutsu, Osaka Municipal Museum, Osaka, 1978, cat.no.  1-234.

Oriental Art, Summer 1966, p. 84 (Bluett and Sons advertisement)
Toji taikei, vol. 41, Tokyo, 1974, pl. 28.
Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol.1, Tokyo, 1976, pl. 692. 
So Gen no bijutsu, Osaka, 1980, pl. 199.
Sekai toji zenshu, vol. 13, Tokyo, 1981, pl. 191.
Toji koza, vol. 7, pl. 17.

In its shape and relatively small size this jar is most unusual, but in its decoration it has all the characteristics of its period. Only one other similar jar appears to be recorded, see Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. 2, London, 1994, pl. 64, originally sold in these rooms, 27th October 1992, lot 29.

The decoration of panels of bajixiang emblems and 'flaming pearls' each set on a small cloud motif is rarely found on the shoulders of small Yuan jars. This design was more commonly used on larger guan with a tall and narrow cylindrical neck such as the famous jar painted with phoenixes, lotus and chrysanthemum in the Percival David Foundation, London, included in Stacey Pierson, Blue and White for China. Porcelain Treasures in the Percival David Collection, London, 2004, pl. 2. See also a small jar with similar sharply angled shoulders, offered in our New York rooms, 2nd November 1979, lot 303, with a lotus scroll replacing the emblems but otherwise very similarly decorated.

The wave band around the neck is a classic design of the period discussed by Kikutaro Saito in ‘The Yuan Blue-and-White and the Yuan Drama in the middle of the 14^th Century’, Kobijutsu, no. 18, July 1967 (pt. I) and no. 19, October 1967 (Pt. II) suggesting that it may represent the waves of the East Sea of Mt. Penglai, home of the Gods, as every Yuan drama ends with the eight hermits flying over the waves of the East Sea. The band of pendant lappets around the shoulder containing the bajixiang or Eight Buddhist Emblems, consisting of the canopy, conch shell, endless knot, lotus, paired fish, umbrella, wheel of law and the vase, is particularly well designed and painted considering the limited space the potter was working with.