This ewer belongs to the long argument about Chinese porcelain: a blue-and-white porcelain body, thrown, glazed and fired until the surface turns to glass. the Jingdezhen ware workshop that made it treated whiteness and colour as a single problem to be solved in the kiln.
What looks like decoration is also a record. The phoenix motif was chosen, not incidental, and on a court vessel a repeat pattern is a way of saying order without using words.
Chinese ceramics carried the weight of a civilisation that measured its courts by what they could fire.
A ewer like this outlived the hands that made it. It is why a blue-and-white porcelain vessel from the Jingdezhen ware dynasty (Ming to Qing) still reads as a small piece of statecraft, fired and then forgotten by everyone but the collector.
Object details
| Name | Jingdezhen kiln blue and white phoenix pierced with peony pattern ewer (景德镇窑青花凤穿牡丹纹执壶) |
|---|---|
| Artefact no. | 新00074807 |
| Technique | Blue-and-white porcelain (青花) |
| Period | Jingdezhen ware dynasty (Ming to Qing) |
| Collection | The Palace Museum, Beijing |
| Source | Palace Museum Digital Collection (数字文物库) |
Image © The Palace Museum. View the original in the Palace Museum Digital Collection.