Hi Rube,
Mu Peng is the pen name of Guo Chunxiang.
He is most well known for his calligraphy bottles (you can find several wonderful examples on Bill Patrick's site)
But he also did indeed paint a series of bottles like yours with Chinese vases, urns , censers ( not censors
) and I have a lot of examples those bottles in my data base.
I cannot find Mo Shi in my data base
So, based on the facts you report:
1. Bottle painted in 1972
2. Bottle bought in China over 20 years ago
also the fact that :
3. Mo Shi sounds like a pen name -not a real name
I'm guessing that Mo Shi was a student artist in the early part of the Modern era who used the name Mo Shi on his student / practice bottles, because those vase/ urn/ censer type bottles are a very common theme on VMIPBs, especially for students because they are relatively easy to paint using a book as the master from which to copy ( sort
of "still life" ) and there's plenty of space to write some practice wide-spaced calligraphy .
The key question is therefore whether "Mo Shi" was temporary student name of a more well-known artist who went on to greater fame later and started using his real name, OR whether "Mo Shi" dropped out of IPB painting and vanished.
Certainly I can't find his name in my data base. Usually - but by no means always - when a famous artist used another name name (some used several pen names at different stages of their careers) I have been able to trace all the names to the same artists and and thus include all the cross-references in my data base.
However, very much doubt if this bottle was painted by a student of Mu Peng if it was bought 20 years ago because Mu Peng was born in 1976 , so the earliest he would have been mature enough to take on his own students would be at age 40 -ish = which would be about now.
Anyway - that's my 2 cents worth.
Cheers
Peter
PS: Buy a copy of DB - it will help you a lot with your research on VMIPBs !