A large and rare 'Longquan' celadon-glazed vase, Yuan dynasty

Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo.

Gen Min no Tōji [Ceramics of the Yuan and Ming dynasties], Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1977, pl. 166.

Kaikan jūgoshūnen kinenten zuroku / The 15th Anniversary Catalogue, Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1981, pl. 882.

Chūgoku tōji / Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1987, pl. 155.

This rare form – minimalist yet grand in its curving waist and flanged neck – is referred to in the scholarship as jiziping (bottles in the shape of the character ji, ‘happiness’). Compare a closely related vase of this form preserved in the Qing Court Collection included in Longquan of the World, vol. II, Palace Museum, Beijing, 2019, cat. no. 67, where Dong Jianli references similar vessels excavated in 1985 from Yuan dynasty kiln sites on Gongren Road, Yiwu city; a kiln waster group of three much smaller Southern Song prototypes of this form accidentally fused together and discovered at the Xikou kilns at Longquan, now preserved in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, included ibid., vol. I, cat. no. 23; and another smaller example (29.1 cm), sold in our London rooms, 7th December 1993, lot 211.