E12 An extremely rare Liao Dynasty green wine pot

Description

Description:   Chinese Liao dynasty stoneware wine pot, glazed with a bright green glaze, enhanced by a white slip under it. The inside is glazed yellowish/greenish. The input of the spout has two vertical slots, as shown in one picture; we never found a similar slotted input on any wine or tea pot.

This pot is extremely rare; we have not found another example at the date. In ancient China wine was served warm, which necessitated means of heating and serving the wine at an agreeable temperature. Starting in the latter part of the Northern Song, tea finally started to eclipse wine as the beverage of choice, creating China’s tea culture. However, the teapot as we know it today only appeared from at least the Yuan Dynasty. The shape of this wine pot has a long history in China, and can be found both in the form of bronze ritual vessels and pottery vessels for daily use. The shape is that of a wine warmer, often with three legs and a hollow tubular handle either for permitting a wooden handle to be introduced, or for better dissipating temperature. The first of the reference images is of a potter vessel from the early Western Han Dynasty (ca. 205-141 B.C.), unearthed from Tomb 1 at Mamangdui, Changsha, in 1972. The next image is a tripod vessel for heating wine from the V&A, dated AD500-580. Our wine pot is, most probably, coming from Cizao Tuwe’an kiln in Fujian. They are named ‘diao’, a pot with a spout and a lateral attached handle. An excavated unglazed example from the kiln site, which originally was equipped with a lid, 13.6 cm. high, is shown in the penultimate picture. A number of vessels from the Cizao kiln show a bright, grass green glaze. They were fired after applying a white slip, and double fired at low temperature after applying the glaze. A green glazed small ewer from the kiln site is shown in the last picture (from the book ‘Cizao yaozhi’, 2011). All the above is placing the possible dating of our wine pot from late Southern Song to Yuan. Hence, we are confident in dating it to Liao Dynasty.

Dating:  Liao Dynasty

Size:  15 cm

Provenance:  Antiquarian market. The antiquarian bought this wine pot and the very rare Cizhou one (see W11 in the White/Chizou ware section) from a collector of Pescara.

References:  See last four pictures, as commented above in the Description.

Notes:  It is worth to mention the wire handle. It is not a much later addition. It could even be original. For sure it has a relevant age, being a silver wire obtained by hand drawing, as shown by the rough lines visible in an image, and not been cut by shears, but sawn instead.