Cizhou-type bottle with inscribed date and design of flying birds

Object Details

• Description

  Pear-shaped bottle.

  Clay: buff stoneware.

  Glaze: iron-black glaze, deep brown flecked with ochre. Foot unglazed, but splotches of glaze on base, fingerprints in glaze around lower edge of bottle.

  Decoration: three highly abstracted birds, flying to the left, painted in iron pigment over the glaze, using a thick, floppy brush. The pigment appears bluish-black and matte.

  Mark: Cyclical date equivalent to 1341 (founding year of Zhizheng era). Illegible mark incised on the base using a blunt tool.

• Marks

  Cyclical date equivalent to 1341 (founding year of Zhizheng era). Illegible mark incised on the base using a blunt tool.

• Inscriptions

  (Louise Cort, 6 December 1991) Inscribed in iron painted over the glaze with a date equivalent to 1341, at the very end of the Yuan dynasty.

  (Louise Cort, 6 December 1991) Inscribed in iron painted over the glaze with a date equivalent to 1341, at the very end of the Yuan dynasty.

• Collection

  Freer Gallery of Art Collection

• Exhibition History

  Chinese Ceramics: 13th–14th Century (December 20, 2014 to January 3, 2016)

  Black and White: Chinese Ceramics from the 10th-14th Centuries (December 18, 2004 to November 7, 2010)

  Beyond Paper: Chinese Calligraphy on Objects (August 18, 1994 to July 3, 1997)

• Origin

  Shanxi province, China

• Credit Line

  Bequest of Elizabeth Hamm Glass

• Type

  Vessel

• Restrictions and Rights

  Usage Conditions Apply

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Keep Exploring

• Related Resources

  collections.si.edu

• Date

  1300s

• Place

  Shanxi province, China

• Topic

  Art, Animals, Cizhou ware, Stoneware, Chinese Art, Birds, Yuan dynasty (1279 - 1368), Ceramics

• Culture

  Chinese

• Object Type

  Vessels (containers)