A 'Jun' blue-glazed tripod censer, Northern Song dynasty

Collection of Dikran Khan Kélékian (1867-1951).

Sotheby's New York, 26th March 1999, lot 297 (part lot).

The Kélékian Collection of Ancient Chinese Potteries, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1917, cat. no. 66.

Enrobed in an unctuous 'optical blue' glaze typical of the finest Jun wares, the present censer represents a particularly fine and large example of its type, produced in the Northern Song dynasty after archaic bronze vessels of ding form. Compare a closely related lavender-blue Jun tripod censer of similar form, excavated in 1962 from Huangzhuang, Yu county, Henan province, illustrated in Henan sheng bowuguan, Beijing, 1985, pl. 128, dated to the Northern Song dynasty on p. 207; and another sold in our New York rooms, 31st March 2005, lot 31, and again in these rooms, 11th May 2016, lot 26.

Dikran Khan Kélékian (1868–1951) was among the leading cross-category collector-dealers of the early twentieth century. Born in Turkey to an Armenian family, Kélékian came to America with his brother in 1893 with the Persian pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition and remained working between New York, London and Paris until his untimely death in 1951. While initially more widely known for his collection of Near Eastern art, Kélékian turned the same exacting eye to the acquisition of a comprehensive collection of early Chinese ceramics which were exhibited in part at Le Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre, Paris in 1914 and again, more completely, at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1917. This collection, largely dispersed in our New York rooms in 1998 and 1999, includes a number of particularly rare Song dynasty pieces including the Cizhou meiping later sold from the Ise Collection in our Hong Kong rooms, 9th September 2025, lot 5008.