A rare 'Yaozhou' bottle vase, Northern Song / Jin dynasty

Mathias Komor, New York, January 1951.

Collection of Myron S. (1907-1992) and Pauline B. (1910-2000) Falk, coll. no. 182.

Christie’s New York, 16th October 2001, lot 39.

Chinese Ceramic Masterpieces, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, 1947.

Karen Thomson, ed., The Blema and H. Arnold Steinberg Collection, Montreal, 2015, pl. 142.

With the establishment of the Northern Song dynasty, the Yaozhou, Baofeng, and Linru kilns superseded those of the Yue in producing celadon wares. The present vase is notable for its elegant profile, a feature heightened by its unadorned surface and lustrous grayish-green glaze. Larger examples with more opaque glazes were exhibited in Song Ceramics, Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 1999, cat. no. 17., and in Song Ceramics from the Kwan Collection, 1994, Hong Kong Museum of Art, cat. no. 92. See also one with a slightly less waisted neck and similar glaze to the present piece, illustrated in The Masterpieces of Yaozhou Ware, Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 1997, pl. 110.