Height (including cover):
5 1/4 inches, 13.3 cm

11-ding-stoneware-jar1

Ding stoneware jar and cover

China, Five dynasties period, 907 - 960

A stoneware jar of globular form, the body supported on a low, straight foot and divided into five lobes by vertically indented lines.  The jar’s shoulder is almost flat and terminates in a short neck. The small round cover has a broad, flat rim with a central domed section and a sharply pointed, conical finial.  The white porcelain body is covered inside and out in a transparent glaze that has a greenish tinge in places.  The base, rim and underside of the cover are unglazed and show the fine-grained white stoneware.

The simple yet sophisticated, unadorned form of this beautiful, carefully potted jar with its almost pure white stoneware body and transparent glaze is strongly reminiscent of the wares produced at the ding kilns in Hebei province.  A stoneware ewer with similar lobed body from the collection of Kai-Yin Lo, catalogued as ding ware, was included in the exhibition Bright as Silver, White as Snow at the Denver Art Museum in 1998.[1]  Another ding ware ewer dated to the Northern Song dynasty is in the collection of the Palace Museum, Taipei; it also has a lobed body.[2]  A ding ware jar in the Baur Collection, Geneva, has a similarly shaped body and low foot.[3]

Provenance:
Ben Janssens Oriental Art, February 2008
Private Collection, UK

1    Lo, Kai-Yin (ed.) Bright as Silver, White as Snow, Chinese White Ceramics from Late Tang to Yuan Dynasty, Denver Art Museum 1998, pl. 14, pp. 112-3
2    Hsieh, Ming-Liang Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Ting Ware White Porcelain, National Palace Museum, Taiwan, 1987, no. 11
3    Ayers, J. Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, Vol. I, Geneva, 1999, no. 7 [A15], p. 48

五代/定窑瓜棱罐

此罐器型挺拔秀丽,通体施牙白色釉,釉面莹润,胎骨轻盈,细圈足,圈足内不施釉。此类罐制作于河北省,器型及底足具备明显的晚唐至五代时期早期定窑瓷器的特征。