A blue and white 'dragon' barrel-form water jar (mizusashi), Ming dynasty, Tianqi period

Japanese Private Collection.

Kobijutsu Izumi, Tokyo.

Compare two similar summer mizusashi in the Itsuo Art Museum, Ikeda - one painted on the interior with lotus, the other with cranes in flight - illustrated in Masahiko Kawahara, Kosometsuke, Monochrome Section, Kyoto, 1977, p. 100, cat. nos 378-380; and a shard discovered at the Shibaqiao kiln site at Jingdezhen from the Tianqi-Chongzhen stratum, derived from the edge of a similar summer mizusashi of barrel-form, illustrated by Huang Qinghua in Colourful Japan – The Special Exhibition of the Ordered Porcelains at the End of the Ming Dynasty From Japan, Jindezhen, 2021, p. 137, where the author also illustrates one of the above mentioned from the Itsuo Fine Art Museum; the blue ridges on the shard are almost identical to the present example. A larger mizusashi of similar form from the Jintsu Family Collection, painted with two buffalo, was included in Kosometsuke & Shonzui, Marchant, London, 2024, cat. no. 37.