Pair of Wucai Baluster Jars & Covers

Each of baluster form rising from a flat base to a slightly waisted neck, each
jar decorated with four elegant ladies and sixteen children engaged in playful activities in the garden, including performing a dragon dance, playing with a ball, impersonating officials, playing hide and seek and playing with flags. All below
a band on the shoulder of ‘cracked ice’, the neck displays sprays of flowering peonies amongst rocks, each jar with domed covers depicting four boys similarly painted surmounted by a lotus bud finial. Decorated in underglaze cobalt blue and overglaze enamels in shades of red, yellow, green and aubergine.

The transitional period is a Western term to distinguish Chinese porcelain
made during the fall of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and the slow emergence
of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), where neither powers had control of the kilns in Jingdezhen. This turbulent time in China’s ceramic production history changed the supply and demand dynamic of the ceramic economy. Kiln supervisors who were previously obedient civil servants had to adapt to the climate, becoming businessmen who looked abroad for new clients thus filling the demand vacuum. The potters were allowed to employ more artistic freedom on the objects they produced creating a plethora of objects with new shapes and designs. Popular auspicious theme such as the boys playing in the garden scene symbolises the wish for successful scholarly sons.

• One similar example is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrated
  in Shunzhi Porcelain: Treasures of an Unknown Reign, 2002, pp. 236-7, no. 83, and another is illustrated in, Lisbon, 1996, pp. 162-3, no. 81.

Provenance:
– Paul Whitfield Collection.