A superb black-glazed 'Cizhou' sgraffiato 'peony' 'tulu' vase, Northern Song / Jin dynasty | 北宋 / 金 磁州窰黑釉劃牡丹紋小口瓶

Some of the most attractive Cizhou wares are those made by various kilns in northern China with designs reserved in black against a white ground. The complicated technique used to create the striking decoration in contrasting colors seen on the present piece is known by the Italian term sgraffiato, literally ‘scratched’. It first appeared around the late eleventh century, and was created through the application of contrasting layers of slip or glaze. On the present bottle, a layer of black slip was applied over white slip, which was later carefully incised to create decorative patterns by revealing the pristine white layer beneath, and then finally covered by a layer of clear glaze. This labor-intensive and time-consuming technique adds a sense of opulence and luxury to the stoneware.

What makes this vase exceptional are the linear ground patterns on its surface. Large peony scrolls are a popular motif on vases decorated with the sgraffiato technique. This vessel, however, is unusually elegant in the fine texturing of the negative space, which distinguishes it from typical sgraffiato wares in which the ground framing the principal design is carved to a ubiquitous white. Here, the space between the floral scrolls is filled with fine hatching in different directions to contrast the bold peony blossoms and leaves. The fluid lines of carved decoration, together with the color scheme, are reminiscent of calligraphy and thus vessels such as the present piece would have been highly prized by literati.

The vase is also notable for its well-proportioned form, with small mouth, broad shoulder and wide base, which is known as ‘tuluping’ or ‘truncated meiping’. This form, which was produced at many northern kilns, is closely related to the taller meiping, a quintessential Song shape, but enjoyed a much shorter period of production. It was produced for only about a hundred years during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, leaving behind a relatively small number of extant examples.

Similar vases, but lacking the linear patterns in the background, are held in important public collections worldwide. See one with a different neck and an additional decorative band encircling the shoulder, in the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts, included in the exhibition Charm of Black & White Ware: Transition of Cizhou Type Wares, Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts, Osaka, 2002, cat. no. 50; and another in the Baur Collection, Geneva, with a simpler peony design, illustrated in Mary Tregear, Song Ceramics, London, 1982, p. 17, fig. 6.