A barbarian among the artists

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear all,
in showing this bottle on a site primarily dedicated to the inside painted bottles I seem to pose the same shock that must have had the Song at the arrival of the Mongols.
Among the bottles purchased recently there are some Tibetan bottles, which frankly I do not like and will try to give them away. But this is different and I think that it is not Tibetan, I think it is Mongolian. Am I wrong? If Mongolian, I will keep it for the contrast when compared to the much more fine Chinese bottles.
It is made by pieces of crackled ceramic embedded in a body which I suppose is of some soft metal such as pewter. Do you too think is Mongolian?
Giovanni

[rpfstoneman]

Giovanni,

Can't say how old the bottle is, but I would speculate initially it is Mongolian style bottle also.  It does not, however, have an original stopper.  I had to laugh, for I do like turtle shaped snuff bottles.  Your stopper is a turtle head from some contemporary hardstone bottle in a turtle shape.  I know this because I have a few hardstone turtle bottles. Interesting bottle though, but my initial hunch is that it may not be as old as it looks.

Charll   

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Giovanni,
     I can honestly say, I have never seen one like it before. I agree with Charll,  it isn't as old as it seems to be.
Shabbat Shalom,
Joey

[George]

I agree with Charll and Joey.. Not old.. Like Charll, I am quite sure not the original stopper..

Still..... Very cool bottle !

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Sorry, George. I'd use it for target practice! That is what makes a horse race, I guess
Joey

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear all,
you did suggest me something...I will come back later today on this.
Giovanni

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear all,
when Charll said that the stopper was not original, then I start to consider if the bottle was an assembled one from different things. In looking at it, I noted that what I believed to be many parts of a crackled pot was indeed all placed with the same exact slope, so I did wonder if it was indeed a complete pot inside the bottle. If so, could it be antique? Well, since the bottle was not a precious one, I took the decision. I disassembled the bottle. I have found that it was indeed build up around a pot, but with my great surprise I have seen that the pot was a damaged one. I believe that it is an ancient pot. Probably Song, probably 18th century, but in any case not a pot purposely made for being transformed into a bottle. It would not be explained the chipped rim if so. Here are the pictures of the pot. The first two pictures have been taken just after removing the metal, the following ones after cleaning the pot with paint stripper and after gluing back the chips.
I will post the details of it on Gotheborg and see what the guys will think there. I will report here the result.
Giovanni

[Steven]

Hi Giovanni,

That becomes really interesting, altho I don't know the possible date of the pot, its a really surpise to me. and can't wait to hear the result from the Gotheborg.

Steven

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Giovanni,
     I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that the crackled porcelain, also called 'soft paste' porcelain, was invented during the Kangxi reign.
Joey

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear Steven and Joey,
I already had contributions from Gotheborg.
Dear Joey I think you know very well that crackled glazes do exist well before the Kangxi reign. You surely know about Ge and Guan glazes, two of the five great glazes of the Song dynasty. The type of glaze of this small pot is Ge. We have already discussed recently about the "golden and iron threads" in another thread.
This type of glaze is not so well defined, still matter of debate among scholars, but the main consensus is that Ge glaze often has this double net of crackles while Guan glaze has a single net usually making bigger cells. Also Guan glaze is more often gray bluish while Ge glaze has two types of glazes, one being very similar to the Guan glaze and the other one being what we see in my small pot.
By the way also according to the answers that I had, Song Ge ware has a much darker paste and the glaze has a matt texture. We can see that this pot has a whitish paste and the glaze is more lustrous. They believe that it should be dated to the late 18th century, Qianlong/Jiaqing.
It is a pity that the bottle is lost, it would have been nice to have it and to know at the same time that it was made by a 18th century pot, but both possibilities were not possible at the same time.
Kind regards
Giovanni

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Giovanni,
     I fear you overestimate my knowledge of Chinese ceramics! A friend in Academia once said that Academics study more and more about less and less, till they know everything about nothing!  I believe I  know about ceramics re.snuff bottles, but not more than that.  Certainly,  nothing about Song ceramics. Sorry.
Best,

Joey

[George]

I am fascinated by that pot !

I have read that rom the Song dynasty and onwards crackles were intentionally produced as decoration. Enhanced by tea (red) or ink (black).. Yours appears to have been enhanced with ink..

There are large, bold, crackle, termed "crab's claw", and a much closer and smaller network termed "fish roe" crackle. The former developed first, and was accentuated with black pigment: the latter, developing at a later stage, was coloured red. On Ge ware sometimes a combination of both are found.

Judging from the size of your jar, maybe could qualify as "crab claw" ?

If you hold a light up to it, is it translucent like a true porcelain, hard paste ceramic ware would be ?  

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear George,
the correct name for this type of glaze is Ge. I don't know exactly which type of crackles are related to the ones of your description, may be the more logical seems fish roe because it is not related to the size of the vessel but to the size of the crackles I think.
I have not checked the light transmission but for sure the body is porcalaneous because of the white color that we can see on the chipped neck. If it were of the Song period, then it would be stoneware and of dark color.
Giovanni

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Giovanni,
      Do the folks at Gotheborg have any idea what it was? A snuff jarlet, or ?
Joey

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear Joey,
it should be a water pot but it is indeed a strange thing. First at all it is very small. I have seen small water pot but not so small. The big question is how it has been fired. A vessel can be fired by placing it on its own foot or upside down sitting on the lip. In both cases the foot or the lip must ble un-glazed to avoid sticking. In some cases, especially for very high quality items like Ru ware, or early Jun ware of the Song dinasty, the piece was completely glazed and was sitting on a few (three-five) firing supports or spurs, which are very fine clay supports that was broken away after firing, and which left some fine points on the glaze, called spur marks. The problem on this small pot is that the base is full glazed and there are no sign of spur marks, hence one can conclude that it was fired upside down on its mouth, which should be not glazed. We can't confirm this because the mouth has been chipped away. But against this conclusion is the fact that the glaze is thicker on the base, which should indicate that it has been fired in up normal position. Out of curiosity, I am posting here a detail of the cross section of the base, where you can see that the potting is very thin. The glaze has a bigger thickness than the body.
Kind regards
Giovanni

[George]

Dear George,
the correct name for this type of glaze is Ge. I don't know exactly which type of crackles are related to the ones of your description, may be the more logical seems fish roe because it is not related to the size of the vessel but to the size of the crackles I think.

Yes.... I read that about Ge glaze... Like you mention, it is the size of the crackles, not the size of the piece.. "Fish Roe" was my second guess.. Just thought fish roe would be a lot smaller/tighter..

I had no idea that a glaze could be so thick !

Looking forward to hearing back from Gotheborg..  

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Giovanni,
   While I understand the heavier glaze being at the bottom because of flow during firing, still, since there is no evidence of  it having been fired that way, I'd say you would have to accept that it was fired standing on the mouth, even though there is no evidence (left, at any rate) to that effect. Or do you have another hypothesis?
Joey

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear Joey, agree completely. That is exactly what I too said on Gotheborg. The thread there did stop becaue it is not possible to reach a conclusion on this point, but the most probable one is just that it ha sbeen fired fushao as the Chinese say, i.e. upside down.
Giovanni
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