A rare miniature green-glazed 'foreign boy' wine vessel, Tang dynasty

Sze Yuan Tang Collection.

The Splendour of Sancai. The Sze Yuan Tang Collection, Littleton and Hennessy, TEFAF, Maastricht, 2012, cat. no. 6.

This playful miniature vessel belongs to a well-known group of earthenware funerary figures of wine merchants. More commonly known of much larger size, they depict foreign male or female figures holding either a wineskin bag or a ceramic vessel in the form of a goose or a lion with a stopper. Fragrant grape wine, as opposed to rice wine, was an expensive commodity imported from Western Asia and popular among the upper echelons of Tang society. While wine became more accessible in the 8th century, after a new variety of grapes began to be grown in Turfan, Gansu province, and in northern Shanxi province, imported wine continued to be sought after.

Such miniature figures of wine merchants were most likely made at the Gongyi kilns in Gongxian, Henan province, the main manufacturing centre of sancai ware in the Tang period. Moulds of miniature wine merchants were unearthed at the kiln site, and illustrated in Huangye Tang sancai yao / Three-Colour Glazed Pottery Kilns of the Tang Dynasty at Huangye, Beijing, 2000, pl. 12, nos 5, 6 and 7. A figure of this type was excavated from the tomb of Lümiao, Luoyang, Henan province, and is now in the Luoyang Provincial Museum, illustrated in Luoyang Tang sancai / Tang Dynasty Tri-Colour Pottery of Luoyang, Beijing, 1980, pl. 91.

A figure holding a fish-shaped vessel, from the E.T. Chow collection was sold in these rooms, 16th December 1980, lot 219; another was sold at Christie’s London, 11th December 1989, lot 37. See also the much larger figure of a wine merchant from the collection of Neil F. Phillips, sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 18th May 1872, lot 54, at Christie’s New York, 25th March 1998, lot 131A, and most recently offered in our New York rooms, 18th September 2007, lot 210.