Two stoneware cups
China, Sui dynasty, 581 - 618

Two stoneware cups, each with a rounded, U-shaped body that spreads outwards and is supported on a straight cut, tapered foot with slightly concave base. The thinly potted sides are entirely unadorned and are covered in a transparent finely crackled, greenish-yellow glaze that has iron-oxide marks. Three spur-marks are visible on the inside of each bowl as well as on the foot, indicating that they were stacked for firing. On one cup, the glaze extends over the foot unto the base. On the other cup, the glaze stops well short of the base in a wavy line. Where the material is unglazed, the finely grained material shows.

• Porcellanous cups with flat bases and straight sides were produced in the late 6th and early 7th century; first at kilns such as Lincheng and Neiqiu in Henan province, and later at the Xing kilns in Hebei.1 The stoneware body is so delicately potted that the result could be described as ‘near porcelain’. During the Tang dynasty the shape was also made in other materials, such as bronze and jade. A comparable stoneware cup of slightly larger size is in the collection of the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.2 Two further examples are in the Carl Kempe Collection, Sweden.3

1 Li, He, Chinese Ceramics, the New Standard Guide, The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1996, p. 119
2 Li He, op. cit. no. 125 (left), pp. 87 and 118-9
3 Gyllensvärd, B. Chinese Ceramics in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm 1964, no. 228, p. 84