This ewer belongs to the long argument about Chinese porcelain: a celadon (qing-glaze) porcelain body, thrown, glazed and fired until the surface turns to glass. the Yaozhou 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 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 celadon (qing-glaze) porcelain vessel from the Yaozhou ware dynasty (Song) still reads as a small piece of statecraft, fired and then forgotten by everyone but the collector.
Object details
| Name | Yaozhou kiln celadon human-shaped ewer (耀州窑青釉人形执壶) |
|---|---|
| Artefact no. | 新00020453 |
| Technique | Celadon (qing-glaze) porcelain (青釉) |
| Period | Yaozhou ware dynasty (Song) |
| 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.