A RARE 'JIZHOU' 'TORTOISESHELL'-GLAZED VASE, MEIPING SONG DYNASTY

of elegant baluster form sweeping up to a small tapered neck with a rolled lip, applied overall with a dark brown glaze with splashes of dark olive-brown falling in drizzling streaks, the recessed base washed in a pale brown slip, the footring revealing a buff-coloured body

A larger vase of this type, from the collection of Mr and Mrs Janos Szekers, was included in the exhibition Hare’s Fur. Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers. Chinese Brown and Black-Glazed Ceramics 400-1400, Harvard University Art Museum, Cambridge, 1996, cat. no. 91, where it is suggested that the milky-white splashes are made of wood ash, water and possibly slip, see p. 234.

A meiping of this type was included in the exhibition Song Yuan shidai de Jizhou yao ciqi [An exhibition of Song and Yuan ceramics from the Jizhou kiln], Shenzhen Museum, Shenzhen, 2012, cat. no. 80; another slightly larger vase of a more ovoid form and with a straight rim, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, was included in the exhibition Treasures from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, China House Gallery, New York, 1979, cat. no. 36.