White glazed stoneware jar

A stoneware jar of ovoid shape, the sides rising from the flat base and curving inward towards the lipped mouth rim. The jar is completely covered in an ivory-white glaze of uniform colour, leaving the flat base unglazed and showing the delicately potted white stoneware.

This beautifully potted, white-glazed stoneware jar was most probably made in the Gongyi (Gongxian) kilns in Henan, northern China, during the 8th or 9th centuries. The Gongyi kilns are well known for producing China’s finest sancai lead-glazed ware, made largely for royal burials in the early 8th century. However, recent excavations have established the Gongyi kilns also at the origins of white porcelain in China. A vase of very similar form with a wider mouth opening, dated by Krahl to the 8th or 9th century, is in the Meiyintang Collection.[1] Another comparable vase of similar proportions, also with a wider mouth rim and dated to the 8th to 9th century, is in the Nezu collection in Tokyo.[2]

1. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, Volume One, Azimuth Editions, London, 1994, no. 205, pp. 124-5
2. Hiroko, N and Namiko, T. Special Exhibition Commemorating the Donation of Collections: Chinese Ceramics, Lacquer and Bronzes, Nezu Museum Publications, 2011, no. 24, p. 28.