A RARE 'BEISHOKU GUANYAO' VASE SOUTHERN SONG DYNASTY

the compressed globular body supported on a straight foot, gracefully rising to a gently tapering cylindrical neck and an everted rim, covered overall in beige glaze suffused with a russet-brown crackle, the footring unglazed revealing the buff-coloured body, Japanese wood box

Mayuyama Ryūsendō, Tokyo.

Sō ji meihin ten [Exhibition of Sung Ceramics Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Japan Ceramic Society], Tokyo, 1955, cat. no. 33.
Sō, Korai, Momoyama ki tōji hyakusen ten [Selected One Hundred Ceramics of Song, Goryeo and Momoyama Dynasty], Tokyo, 1960, cat. no. 24.
Chūgoku Sō Gen bijutsu ten [Chinese Art of the Sung and Yuan Periods], Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, 1961, cat. no. 191.
Seiji meihin ten [Exhibition of the Great Works of Celadon], Japan Ceramic Society, Tokyo, 1963, cat. no. 5.
Tō Sō meitō ten [Exhibition of Tang-Song Ceramics], Japan Ceramic Society, Tokyo, 1964, cat. no. 87.
Chūgoku tōji meiho ten [Exhibition of the Great Works of Chinese Ceramics], The Gotoh Museum, Tokyo, 1966.
Sō Gen no bijutsu [The Art of Song and Yuan], Osaka Municipal Art Museum, Osaka, 1978, cat. no. 1-18.
Sō ji – Shinpin to yobareta yakimono [Song Ceramics], Tobu Museum of Art, Tokyo/ The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka/ Hagi Uragami Museum, Hagi, 1999, cat. no. 64.
Chūgoku tōji bi wo miru kokoro [Chinese Ceramics, Enlightening through Beauty], Sen-oku Hakuko Kan Bunkan, Tokyo, 2006, cat. no. 32.
Nan Sō no seiji sora wo utsusu utsuwa [Heavenly Blue: Southern Song Celadons], Nezu Museum, Tokyo, 2010, cat. no. 59.
Seiji no ima –Uketugareta waza to bi Nan Sō kara gendai made [Celadon Now: Techniques and Beauty Handed Down from Southern Song to Today], Tokyo, 2014, cat. no. I - 02.

Seiichi Okuda, Sakutarō Tanaka, Fukosai Hirota, Haruzo Hayashi (eds), Chūgoku no tōji [Chinese Ceramics], Tokyo, 1955, pl. 180.
Fujiō Koyama,Tōki zenshū. Tō Sō no seiji [The Complete Works of Ceramics: Celadon of Tang to Song Dynasty], Tokyo, 1960, pl. 48.
Fujiō Koyama, ed., Sekai tōji zenshū. Sō hen, vol. 10, Tokyo, 1961, pl. 80.
Ryūsen Shūhō. Sōgyō shichijū shūnen kinen/Mayuyama: Seventy Years, Tokyo, 1976, vol. 1, pl. 461.
Gakuji Hasebe, Sekai tōji zenshū. Sō [The Complete Works of World Ceramics: Song], Tokyo, 1977, pl. 69.
Fujiō Koyama, Tōji taikei. Seiji [The Outline of Ceramics: Celadon], Tokyo, 1978, pl. 17.
Beishoku seiji/Beishoku Celadon, The Bulletin of the Chinese Ceramic Study Association of Tokiwayama Bunko Foundation, vol. 1, Tokyo, 2008, pls 1b, 2 right, 3, and fig. 1 right.

This rare vase is in good condition with the exception of a 1cm., hairline rim crack and associated 1mm., rim chip, a 10x3mm., area of rubbed glaze at the waist of the body, a 2mm., very shallow flake to the edge of the footring (possibly from firing), minor glaze firing imperfections including two iron-spots and two tiny pieces of grit adhered to the body, and light glaze scratches.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Guan wares of the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) can be considered the most varied type of Song ceramics (960-1279). The present vase with its highly unusual golden amber glaze and exquisite ‘ice flake’ crackle represents one of the rarest varieties.

 

Guan ware is mentioned and lauded already in contemporary texts of the Southern Song period. According to those texts, Xiuneisi, the Palace Maintenance Office, set up a kiln in the new capital, modern Hangzhou, to produce wares modelled on the official ware of the Northern Song (960-1127). Somewhat later, another kiln at Hangzhou produced a similar but lesser ware. The basic message of these reports appears now supported by archaeological research, since two different kiln sites have been explored at Hangzhou, one at Wuguishan, south of the former Imperial city, the other at Laohudong on the site formerly occupied by the Imperial city.[1] Because of their locations and the different qualities of the sherds recovered, the Wuguishan site has been interpreted as the (lesser) Jiaotanxia kiln, the Laohudong site as the exalted Xiuneisi manufactory. It remains difficult, however, to attribute extant examples of guan ware to either kiln site.

 

Yet there seems to be a consensus that in order for a vessel to be considered guan ware at all, it requires an exceptional glaze, and usually a striking crackle. The glaze can be in a wide range of tones from opaque milky-grey over watery greens to yellowish tones, and the crackle, too, can vary from distinct surface lines, which could be enhanced through staining, to a web of translucent threads below the surface, resembling stacked flakes of ice.

 

The present vase shows the exceptional ‘ice flake’ crackle in a glaze of extremely rare, warm, amber-coloured tone. Preserved vessels with such yellowish glazes, which are due to oxidization rather than reduction in the firing, are outstandingly scarce, and accordingly seem almost alien to our aesthetic concept of Song taste in ceramics.

 

Our present image of the ideal guan ware is primarily shaped by the composition of the Qing court collection, whose pre-Ming (1368-1644) items were largely assembled in the Qianlong era (1736-95).[2] Guan ware of this amber tone was clearly not highly considered at this point in time and is not present, for example, in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei. 

 

Hasebe Gakuji has pointed out, however, that the most highly considered ceramics of the preceding Tang dynasty (618-907), the mise (secret colour) wares from the Yue kilns of Zhejiang, which provided some of the imperial donations to the Buddha bone relic at the Famen Temple outside Xi’an, included at least one bowl, with a gold and silver inlaid lacquer coating on the outside, which shows a yellow-burnt Yue glaze on the inside, of very much the same tone as the present vase.[3] At the time, the glaze colour clearly had a positive image.

 

An even stronger case for this can perhaps be made when comparing guan ware and jade. The beauty of the various celadon glaze tones achieved by kilns in north and south China was always judged by comparison with the endless variety of tones of nephrite, perhaps China’s most favoured material for works of art. In the Song dynasty, the rare and highly valued yellow jade – very close in its overall aspect to the yellow glaze of the present vase – seems to have been particularly appreciated, judging by jade carvings preserved from that time (Fig. 1). The attraction of this colour would thus have been very familiar to a connoisseur of the period.

 

In Japan, where many Song ceramics arrived in the Song dynasty, the present glaze colour has been highly revered for decades, and singled out through the special term beishoku (‘rice coloured’, referring to the yellowish colour of raw, unhulled rice grains, as opposed to mise in Chinese, which is used for opaque whitish glazes reminiscent of boiled, hulled rice). The term beishoku was coined by the collector-connoisseur Tsuneo Yonaiyama, consul of Hangzhou in the 1950s, who collected many sherds from the Jiaotanxia kiln site. The present vase is extensively discussed and has been highly praised in a recently published monograph on four pieces of beishoku guan ware, where because of its perfect form and absence of any discolouration to the even yellowish glaze, it is judged to have been ‘produced by design with precise color control’.[4] The other three beishoku guan pieces comprise a companion piece to the present vase, a wide-rimmed basin, and a small fluted cup. The basin, which shows a distinct firing crack in the rim, is considered to have been preserved on account of its successful glaze colour and crackle.

 

The companion vase in the Tokiwayama Bunko, Kamakura, which has the same form and a very similar glaze but with a touch of green on one side, reveals the direct connection to the more familiar greenish guan ware (Fig. 2); and a very similar vase from the Eumorfopoulos collection, now in the British Museum, London, but fired the more classic bluish green would seem to come from the same kiln (Fig. 3). It is difficult to establish, however, which kiln this may be since sherds of very similar glaze colour and crackle have been recovered both from the Laohudong and Jiaotanxia kiln sites.[5] Test pieces fired in different conditions – reducing versus oxidizing – by Japanese celadon potter Shinobu Kawase document the transformation of the typical dark brown body of green-fired guan ware to a light beige – similar to the body on the present vase – on yellow-burnt pieces fired in oxidization.[6]

 

With its broad base and ever so slightly everted lip, which display the uncanny feeling for proportion that makes Song ceramics models for design even today, this vase must be considered one of the masterpieces of Song potting. With its glorious, if unfamiliar, glaze colour and striking crackle pattern, the Inoue beishoku vase must be called a masterpiece of guan ware.

[1]Nan Song guan yao/Southern Song Governmental Porcelain Workshop, Beijing, 1996; Du Zhengxian, ed., Hangzhou Laohudong yaozhi ciqi jingxuan [Selection of porcelains from the Laohudong kiln sites in Hangzhou], Beijing, 2002; Zhang Zhenchang, ed., Nan Song guan yao wenji/A Collection of Essays on Southern Song Dynasty Guan Kiln, Beijing, 2004.
[2] This has also been pointed out by Sarah Sato, ‘Beishoku Celadon Ware of the Southern Song Guan-yao’, Beishoku seiji/Beishoku Celadon, The Bulletin of the Chinese Ceramic Study Association of Tokiwayama Bunko Foundation, vol. 1, Tokyo, 2008, pp. 48 and 108.
[3] Hasebe Gakuji, ‘Reconsideration of the Celadon Known as “Secret Colored” ’, loc. cit., pp.78-80 and 91-3, and p. 76, fig. 16c top.
[4]Loc. cit., pp. 35-6 and 121-2.
[5] E.g. Du Zhengxian, op. cit., pls 31, 36, 48, 84, 112; Beishoku seiji, loc. cit., pl. 11 a-p.
[6]Loc. cit., pl. 13, particularly test pieces A and B.