A RARE 'CIZHOU' CARVED 'PEONY' VASE NORTHERN SONG DYNASTY

the round-shouldered baluster body rising from a short spreading foot to a tall waisted neck and broad everted rim, freely carved around the exterior through the iron black slip to the white slipped body with an undulating leafy peony scroll, all above a lotus-lappet band at the foot, the base unglazed revealing the buff body

Vases of this form and carved decoration are known from the Cizhou type site at Guantai, see Guantai Cizhou yaozhi (The Cizhou Kiln Site at Guantai), Beijing, 1997, p. 123, figs. 1,2 and 4; and col. pl. 9, fig. 2. Other examples can be found in important museums and private collections, see two illustrated in Yutaka Mino, Freedom of Clay and Brush Through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz'u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis, 1980, pl. 42, fig. 106, from the collection of the Tokyo National Museum, and fig. 107, from the Kikusui Museum, Yamagata Prefecture in Japan. Two similar vases in the Alexander and Oppenheim collections are illustrated in R.L. Hobson, Chinese Ceramics in Private Collections, London, 1931, p. 7, fig. 9 and p. 58, fig. 118 respectively, with the Oppenheim vase now in the British Museum; and one in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is published in John Ayers, Far Eastern Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1980, pl. 113.  

A related 'Cizhou' vase, from the Joseph Homberg collection, was sold in these rooms, 19th July 1949, lot 16; and another, formerly in the collections of William C. Alexander and Alfred Clark, sold in these rooms, 25th March 1975, lot 14, is now in the Matsuoka Museum of Art, Tokyo.

See a plain white-glazed 'Cizhou' vase of this exquisite Song shape, from the Toguri Museum of Art, Tokyo, included in the exhibition Charm of Black and White Ware; Transition of Cizhou Type Wares, Osaka Municipal Museum of Art, Osaka, 2002, cat.no. 3, sold in these rooms, 9th June 2004, lot 56.