354.
A ‘GE TYPE’ CRACKLED-GLAZED AND GILT BISCUIT BALUSTER VASE
Qing dynasty, Qianlong period
13,5 cm high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 3392.
The tapering body rising to a waisted neck with everted mouth, flanked by two moulded gilt biscuit handles suspending loose gilt metal rings, toward the base a high relief biscuit band with gilt ruyi heads, a similar band to the shoulder together with a leiwen motif frieze, the remaining external surface overall covered with a greyish crackle glaze.
The combination in one single object of glazed zones and sections left in biscuit was experimented already in the Yuan dynasty, specifically in the kilns of Longquan (see as example the meiping vase with a céladon glaze ground and biscuit figurative panels in the Percival David collection, London: S. Pierson, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art. A Guide to the Collection, London 2002, n. 35). In the following centuries this compicated technique was used especially for scultpures, with a complessive visual effect resembled Tang dynasty funerary statues, usually with the face and the hands left unglazed.
The group of porcelain to which this vase belongs, particularly appreciated in Europe from the eighteenth century, could be interpreted as a tentative to create an overall effect of a porcelain vessel enriched with a gilt metal mount.
