99.
A PAIR OF ‘BLUE AND WHITE’ EWERS
Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, late 17th century
23,5 cm high each
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. nn. 3519, 3521.
Ewers shaped as phoenix were already in the repertory of Chinese ceramists during the Tang dynasty, usually covered with a ‘three colours’ glaze (sancai) (probably the earliest known example, dated to Sui or early Tang dynasty is the one in the Palace Museum in Beijing: Sekai Toji Zenshu. Vol. 11. Sui Tang, Tokyo 1976, tav. 6), inspired by Sassanian silver objects which arrived in China through the Silk Road, as a demonstration of the intense cultural exchanges which occurred between the two poles of the Asian continent at that time.
The Tang phoenix-head ewers remained a source of inspiration also in later production, such as qingbai glazed pieces of the Southern Song dynasty (A. Poster, in Journey through Asia 2003, p. 59, n. 9, for an ewer of this type in the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York), while a new use of the phoenix head occurred during the Yuan dynasty when it appeared as a spout on a side of flattened rounded flasks (Splendors in Smalt. Art of the Yuan Blue-and-White Porcelain, exhibition catalogue, Shanghai 2012, pp. 142-143).
The shape of these two ewers in the Duca di Martina museum, which missed the covers, is however more directly derived by sixteenth century kendi with phoenix-head spout (see for example the piece in the Myrna and Samuel Myers Collection; see also the item in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antigua in Lisbon).
A very similar ewer is in the Asian Museum of San Francisco (inv. B60P249); another comparable pair, mounted together with three other vases, belonged to the Grandider Collection (La Ceramique Chinoise. De l’epoque de K’ang-Hi a nos jours, Paris 1922, pl. 244); see also Pinto de Matos 2011, n. 104.
