AN EXCEPTIONALLY RARE 'WINTERGREEN' GLAZED CHESS JAR AND COVER MING DYNASTY, YONGLE PERIOD

THIS IS A PREMIUM LOT. CLIENTS WHO WISH TO BID ON PREMIUM LOTS ARE REQUESTED TO COMPLETE THE PREMIUM LOT PRE-REGISTRATION 3 WORKING DAYS PRIOR TO THE SALE.




singularly beautiful, finely-potted in a compressed globular form, the elegant body on a broad flat base with tapered sides extending to softly rounded shoulders and rising to a short neck, veiled in an exquisitely rich and silky 'wintergreen' glaze thinning at the mouthrim and pooling around the shoulders in a sea-green tone, suffused with random silver threads of cracklure, the low flat cover similarly glazed

The overall condition is very good with only an old Japanese style repair to two small shallow chips (1cm and .5cm) filled with gold painted lacquer on the rim of the cover. The glaze is very even in colour and very smooth. The actual colour is a tinge less blue and a little bit greener than in the catalogue illustration.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

A Unique Wintergreen Jar and Cover

The Yongle period was one of the most active periods for China's craftsmen and can be considered the most important period for China's porcelain production. No other reign – except perhaps the Yongzheng period of the Qing dynasty (1723-35) three-hundred years later – was marked by such innovation in porcelain technology, imagination in design and rigorous pursuit of quality as that of the Yongle Emperor, whose rule commenced in Nanjing in 1403 and ended in Beijing in 1424. His The move of the capital to a new location required not only gigantic building work, but also necessitated the production of objects of all kinds by specially designated imperial workshops to fill the newly constructed palace halls. Imperial workshops created porcelain, lacquerware, cloisonné, textiles and Buddhist gilt bronzes of unparalleled excellence and Chinese crafts as a whole experienced an unprecedented flowering.

The imperial porcelain workshops at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province increased quantity as well as quality of their production with awesome rapidity, as the excavations of the waste heaps of the Ming imperial kilns have documented. As new pigments and firing techniques, new shapes and designs were tried out, the potters' technical leap forward was so immense, that thereafter no real innovation took place for centuries, until the introduction of foreign technology from the West in the 18^th century supplied once more new impulses.

This exquisite little jar and cover embody some of the Yongle period's most remarkable achievements: its shape, which appears to be previously unrecorded, impresses through its simplicity, its glaze colour dazzles through its subtlety.

The wide range of different glaze colours and tones achieved at the Yongle imperial kilns was a triumph of the craftsmanship of the early Ming potters. Various pale green glazes, sometimes more yellowish-green in tone and then interpreted as imitating Longquan celadon, sometimes more greyish as if imitating guan ware, and sometimes bluish like the present example and then referred to as dongqing, 'wintergreen', or cuiqing, 'jadeite green', began to be achieved at Jingdezhen in the early Ming period. A light green glazed stem bowl with an engraved Yongle reign mark and of the period was sold in these rooms 24^th November 1981, lot 133.  Both a yellowish and a bluish green glaze colour are also known from some deep conical bowls with incised lotus scrolls, attributed to various 15^th-century periods; for a bluish-green example see the bowl sold in these rooms 30^th April 1996, lot 355, and exhibited at the Min Chiu Society exhibition Monochrome Ceramics of the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1977, cat. no. 56.

Small jars were in the Yongle reign created in a range of shapes, often with small lugs, and rarely with this type of cylindrical disc-shaped cover; see a line drawing in Geng Baochang, Ming Qing ciqi jianding [Appraisal of Ming and Qing porcelain], Hong Kong, 1993, p. 27, fig. 44. Their function is not completely clear. The present form is reminiscent and may have been inspired by drum-shaped chess piece jars which in the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1279-1368) period were created by many Chinese kilns, although their shape is much simpler in concept (compare a Yuan blue-and-white example from Jingdezhen included in exhibition Jingdezhen chutu Yuan Ming guanyao ciqi [Yuan and Ming imperial porcelain excavated at Jingdezhen], Yan-Huang Art Museum, Beijing, 1999, cat.no.1).

The most closely related Yongle shape is that of a small jar and cover of very similar form, but with three small lugs attached around the shoulder. One example from the Qing court collection, also with a pale green glaze, is still in Beijing, see The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Monochrome Porcelain, Hong Kong, 1999, pl.123 (Fig. 1), also illustrated in Zhongguo taoci quanji [Complete series on Chinese ceramics], vol.13, Shanghai, 2000, pl.10; a second green-glazed example exists in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, published in Minji meihin zuroku [Illustrated catalogue of important Ming porcelains], vol. 1, Tokyo, 1977, pl. 32.

A monochrome white jar and cover of that shape, with three lugs and with incised decoration, was in the Kempe collection, see Bo Gyllensvärd, Chinese Ceramics in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1964, pl.664. This basic shape, but with a smaller cylindrical cover, was also used for ewers, with spout , handle and again three lugs attached; for a monochrome white example see Minji meihin zuroku,  op.cit., pl. 31.

A monochrome 'sweet-white' jar without lugs – like the present example – but lacking a cover and with incised decoration is in the Shanghai Museum, see Lu Minghua, Shanghai Bowuguan cangpin yanjiu daxi: Mingdai guanyao ciqi, Shanghai, 2007, pl. 4-12. Another with a stepped, domed, knopped cover (which may or may not belong) is in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, published in Teresa Tsao, Mingdai chunian ciqi tezhan mulu/Catalogue of a Special Exhibition of Early Ming Period Porcelain, Taipei, 1982, cat.no.55. Similar jars, without covers, are also known with blue-and-white decoration of garden flowers; see, for example, a piece sold in these rooms, 29^th April 1997, lot 532.

This form, with small differences in the profile, became a popular jar shape in the Chenghua reign (1465-87); see three different jars, all lacking covers: a blue-and-white one of Chenghua mark and period in the Meiyintang collection, illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994, vol. 2, pl. 678; a polychrome painted jar, also of Chenghua mark and period, in a private collection, published in the exhibition catalogue The Emperor's Broken China, Sotheby's, London, 1995, p.109, fig.2; and an unmarked polychrome painted jar in the Palace Museum, Beijing, in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang gu taoci ciliao xuancui [Selection of ancient ceramic material from the Palace Museum], Beijing, 2005, vol.1, pl.124. A related shape, with a slight variation in profile, but with a similar disc-shaped cover was also used for Chenghua jars marked with the character tian, such as the example excavated at Jingdezhen and included in the exhibition Jingdezhen chutu Yuan Ming guanyao ciqi, op.cit., cat. no. 327.