Covered box, fragment of the base and wall

Object Details

• Description

  Shape: Shard consists of a fragment of the base and side wall of a small covered ceramic box. The height of the box, without lid, would have been approximately 4.4 cm. The top of the wall terminates in an interior flange which has been luted onto the main wall of the box. The box wall is 0.5 cm thick. The bevelled flange is 0.9 cm wide and extends 0.4 cm above the edge of the box wall.

  Clay: White, very fine-grained, almost porcelaneous, stoneware. There are many fine gray and black inclusions and no air pockets. Where exposed to the kiln atmosphere portions of the base have burned orange-red.

  Glaze: The box is glazed with a bubbly, pale seawater-green glaze. The translucent glaze is quite heavily crackled and is a darker, almost bluish, green in the vertical fluting where it is thicker. The base and flange of the box are unglazed. The interior is completely covered with a thin, finely crackled coating of the same glaze used on the outside of the box.

  Decoration: Impressed vertical fluting extends from the base of the box approximately two-thirds of the way to the top. The vertical fluting creates the impression of panels approximately 2.5 cm wide on the bottom two-thirds of the box.

  Marks: None.

• Provenance

  To 1957

  John A. Pope (1906-1982), Washington DC, collected between August 1956 and April 1957 in Angkor, Cambodia. [1]

  From 1957

  Freer Gallery of Art, gift of John A. Pope, Washington DC [2]

  Notes:

  [1] See Curatorial Remark 3 in the object record. See also “Ceramics in Mainland and Southeast Asia: Collections in the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery”, copy in object file, Collections Management Office.

  [2] See note 1. See also object file, Collections Management Office.

• Collection

  Freer Study Collection

• Previous custodian or owner

  Dr. John Alexander Pope (1906-1982)

• Origin

  Chaozhou kilns, Guangdong province, China

• Credit Line

  Gift of John A. Pope

• Type

  Container

• Restrictions and Rights

  Usage Conditions Apply

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Keep Exploring

• Related Resources

  collections.si.edu

• Date

  1100s, 1200s

• Name

  Pope, John Alexander

• Place

  Chaozhou kilns, China, Guangdong province

• Topic

  Art, Stoneware, Chinese Art, Chaozhou ware, Southern Song dynasty (1127 - 1279), Ceramics

• Culture

  Chinese

• Object Type

  Containers