A rare molded 'Longquan' celadon-glazed, Yuan dynasty, 14th century

Collection of Mrs. S.K. de Forest.

American Art Association Anderson Galleries, Inc., New York, 28th January 1937, lot 152.

Warren E. Cox, New York, 1945.

Sotheby Parke Bernet, 22nd February 1973, lot 196 (cover).

New York Private Collection.

Sotheby's New York, 21st September 2006, lot 99.

Warren E. Cox, The Book of Poetry and Porcelain, vol. 1, New York, 1945, pl. 45.

Liyan Jin, ed., Shanzhong shanghui oumei fendian ji meiguo yi lang deng jingshou: Zhongguo yishu pin ziliao huibian [Chinese Art Handled by Yamanaka & Co.’s Western Branches and American Art Association: A Documentary Compilation], vol. 8, Shanghai, 2025, p. 3636. 

Enrobed in an unctuous seafoam glaze, thinning to a silvery turquoise around its delicate molded scrollwork, the present vase is exceptional in color and quality. 

Monumental vases with molded and applied decoration were first produced at the Longquan kilns of Zhejiang around the late Song dynasty (960–1279) and reached their zenith in the Yuan (1271–1368). These imposing and graceful forms – known as ‘phoenix tail’ or ‘yen-yen’ vases in the West – were assembled in vertical sections with an inverted saucer-shaped piece of clay serving as the base. Compare a similarly shaped yen-yen vase in the Percival David Foundation, London, inscribed with the date corresponding to 1327, illustrated in Margaret Medley, Yuan Porcelain and Stoneware, London, 1974, pl. 58.

It is rare to find a vase of this form and size molded with lotus flowers in place of more conventional peony scrolls. Compare one closely related vase of peony design similarly reduced at the neck in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (accession no. 26.292.77), illustrated in Suzanne G. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989, p. 140, fig. 136; two other reduced examples preserved in the Topkapi Saray Museum, illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, vol. 1, London, 1986, figs 204 and 205; a complete vase in the Palace Museum, Beijing, in Longquan qingci [Longquan celadon], Beijing, 1966, pl. 41; and another from the collection of the Banna-ji Temple, Ashikaga, illustrated in Sekai tōji zenshū / Ceramic Art of the World, vol. 13: Liao, Chin and Yüan Dynasties, Tokyo, 1981, pl. 153, alongside a tripod incense burner of matching design and similar glaze effect from the same collection, pl. 151; and another complete vase from the collection of the Horyu-ji Temple, Ikaruga, ibid., fig. 76.

Smaller and more rudimentary examples of this design are similarly attested and attributed to the early fourteenth century. Compare one example uncovered from the notable shipwreck off Sinan, Korea, dated to around 1323, included in the Special Exhibition of Cultural Relics found off Sinan Coast, National Museum of Korea, Seoul, 1977, b.w. pl. 23.