Author: --

Size: D15cm；H24.3cm

Signed and dated: Ming Dynasty

Estimate: 1,650,000 -2,650,000

Final Price: --

The item is held under the bonded status, The default place of collection is Hong Kong, China. Please check the NOTICE ON AUCTION OF BONDED LOTS in this catalogue for details.

Longquan Ware Jar in Bronze Form Zun
Rose Kerr
Longquan wares were made at kilns in southern Zhejiang province, that had operated as early as the 3rd century AD and went on making ceramics till the Qing dynasty. This jar is an example of the highest quality Longquan wares, that were made during the Southern Song dynasty. This short period of 150 years saw the creation of superlative ceramics. Some people believe that the quality of Southern Song Longquan wares was never surpassed.
The body of the jar is hard and dense, grey in colour and showing a warm reddish tone where it has re-oxidised in the kiln. Its glaze is a beautiful blue-green colour and where it runs thickly the colour is even more pronounced. Celadon glazes were and still are admired if they have a blue tone, rather than being green. The glaze has the sheen of satin cloth, and when you touch the surface it is smooth and cold, very pleasant to the touch. In terms of both colour and feel it has similarities to jade, a material that was greatly admired by scholars and connoisseurs throughout Chinese history.
For hundreds of years, some of the most treasured Chinese ceramics have been Song imperial wares: Ru ware 汝窑made for the Northern Song court and Guan ware 官窑for the Southern Song. Around AD 1200 during the Southern Song, court officials who lusted after imperial Guan wares made at the capital city Lin’an (present-day Hangzhou), set up their own kilns at Dayao大窑 , and at Xikou 溪口. These two Longquan kilns were not too far away from Lin’an so they were within reach of palace officials, and from about 1200-1260 Dayao, Xikou and other kilns developed superior Longquan ceramics that imitated imperial Guan ware.
In looking at the jar, there are four aspects for consideration:
its surface beauty and its appeal as a lovely object
the technology that gave rise to such refinement, in particular the dragon kiln that fired it
the significance of its shape, that copies an archaic bronze called a zun
its provenance, in particular its ownership by Colonel W.R. Hodgson
The aesthetic appeal of the jar has already been described in the first two paragraphs. Top-quality pieces like this zun came out of a long tradition of ceramic-making at Longquan and must have been specially selected from an enormous production, that included many lesser quality wares and outright kiln wasters. In order to understand the range of qualities, we need to consider the technology that produced the jar. The most important point is that the jar is made of porcelain, in spite of its body material being grey. White porcelain raw materials were used to make Longquan wares as early as the Northern Song dynasty, and the process was refined and expanded during the Southern Song. But unlike white porcelain from Jingdezhen, Longquan porcelains were deliberately adulterated with iron-rich clays, that gave the body a greyish tone. This approach improved the quality of wares and resulted in very high-quality ceramics with smooth, pale-grey bodies. Thus in addition to being attractive, they were hard-wearing and suitable for use in both domestic and ceremonial contexts.
While most Longquan celadon bodies seem to have been made from porcelain-stone/red-clay mixtures, a few kiln sites appear to have produced some wares from porcelain stone alone, particularly the premier Southern Song dynasty kiln-complex at Dayao that was mentioned above. Dayao produced pale bluish-glazed celadon wares of outstanding quality that are known as di wares 弟窑 in China and kinuta wares 砧窑 in Japan. The use of porcelain raw materials in the Longquan glazes also improved their quality and appearance by lowering their iron oxide and titania contents, and boosting their levels of potassium oxide. The titania levels in a glaze are vital to develop the much-desired bluish colour, thereby supplying the fine blue-green colours that were so admired by Chinese connoisseurs of the Song dynasty. These Longquan glazes developed an unctuous jade-like quality in firing, and their lower colourant percentages supplied colours that ranged from duck-egg blue to sea-green. From the end of the Northern Song dynasty there was rapid development, the industry at Dayao peaking in terms of production during the Southern Song and Yuan periods.

All Longquan wares, from the highest quality to the lowest “seconds”, were fired in the same style of kiln. This was the famous “dragon kiln” of south China, that was essentially a narrow tunnel built up a low slope, that employed wood as a fuel. A tall chimney stood at the top end, and because of its slope the dragon kiln could funnel heat upwards. Dragon kilns needed to have shelters built over them to minimise effects of rain on kiln temperature. The dragon kilns of Longquan were among the most productive in the whole of China and their structures could be huge. In the Northern Song dynasty they ranged from 70 to 80 metres in length, while in the Southern Song they were shorter, about 30 to 50 metres long. Wares were stacked on floor of the tunnel, either on shallow steps, or with their supports steadied by a bed of quartz grit.
By the Southern Song, dragon kilns operated by first lighting a fire in the main firebox at the bottom end, which slowly fired ceramics in the lowest section. The firebox was then bricked up, with a small air-gap left. Next fuel was added in sequence through stoke holes on the sides of the ascending kiln, commencing at the first port. When this area of the kiln reached full heat, side stoking transferred to the next stokehole, a metre or so up the kiln. The firebox would then be sealed and air allowed to enter the kiln through the last-used stoke hole. The process would be repeated until the whole kiln was fired, at which point all the ports would be sealed and the kiln allowed to cool. Using this procedure, firing of the successive ports took place rapidly, sometimes taking as little as half-an-hour per port. A typical small dragon kiln (about 30 metres in length) might take 24 hours to fire and 24 hours to cool down, while a longer kiln (about 42 metres in length) might take 36 hours to fire and 72 hours before it could be unpacked. While side stoking was an enormous help in equalising temperatures along the length of dragon kilns, the heating of these kilns still remained uneven from roof to floor. The natural tendency of hot gases to rise, together with difficulties in setting wares in high stacks (which left considerable space at the top of the setting where flames would preferentially flow) meant that the lower parts of the settings were often badly under-fired ①. This is the reason that there is such a variation of quality in Longquan wares, and why this zun jar represents a rare minority of top-quality pieces that survived the firing in perfect condition.
The shape of the jar is significant, because it copies an ancient bronze shape that first appeared during the Shang dynasty (about 1520-1010 BC). The vessel has been assigned the name zun 尊 and it was used as a ritual container to hold alcohol, and to keep it warm. Zun were shaped like tall goblets, with no handles or legs, the mouth flaring outwards. They were made of bronze that had been constructed using piece moulds, their sections joined together and ornamented with raised ribs. These features are copied faithfully on this Southern Song dynasty Longquan vessel. Its profile copies a Bronze Age original, and the shaped ribs of clay that have been applied to all three sections of the jar imitate the raised ribs on metal. It is probable that the jar did not copy an actual bronze, but rather a drawing. Catalogues of archaic bronzes illustrated with line drawings first appeared during the Northern Song dynasty, thereby circulating visual information widely. Judging from present-day practice at Chinese kilns, simple drawings were probably made from those printed catalogues, for the potters to work from.
Why was this ancient metal shape copied in ceramic during the Song dynasty? There is one chief reason, and it is because educated scholars had profound reverence for the past. The Song dynasty was the great age of the bureaucrat, and there was a large and ever-growing market for scholarly objects. The memory of the preceding Five Dynasties period (AD 907-960) led the first emperors of Song to reduce the power of the military, and to encourage a governing class of well-educated, civilian administrators. An important learned pursuit was the collecting and appreciation of works of art, and of antiquities. Intellectuals had developed a new school of philosophy, that fostered a mistrustful view of the recent past. The Han (206 BC-AD 220) and the Tang (AD 618-906) were two of the most powerful dynasties in Chinese history, but Song dynasty scholars
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①: Rose Kerr (ed.) and Nigel Wood, Ceramic Technology. Volume 5 Part 12 of Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.252-3, 357-359, 572-581.

believed them to be tainted by Legalist Confucian philosophy. For this reason they turned back to the ancient periods of the Bronze Age, such as the Shang dynasty, and avidly studied ancient texts. They also examined archaic objects, including those that had been dug up from the ground. Bronze Age tombs yielded jades and bronzes, for example artefacts unearthed at the Shang dynasty capital Anyang during the Huizong reign period (1101-1125 ). The Huizong emperor was the greatest connoisseur of the period, amassing a vast collection of treasures in his palace and promoting the writing of texts to illustrate and document them. Many ceramic artefacts borrowed archaic forms and decorations during the Song period.
There are comparable Longquan zun vessels in the Sir Percival Collection at the British Museum (Fig. 1), and in the Tokyo National Museum (Figs. 2 & 3), but they chiefly date to the succeeding Yuan dynasty and are not quite so refined as this vessel ②. Nevertheless, it is apparent that the precedent for ceramics to copy archaic bronzes was first established during the Song dynasty. In the ensuing Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties this tradition continued, because reverence for the past demonstrated education and scholarship.
Next we turn to the question of provenance. The jar was once owned by Colonel William Roy Hodgson (1892-1958), an Australian soldier and diplomat with a long and distinguished international career. Colonel Hodgson was Australia’s representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and a member of the drafting committee for the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. He served on the drafting committee alongside other much more well-known figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), wife of USA President Franklin D. Roosevelt and first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945; Dr. Peng-Chun Chang 张彭春 (1892-1957) a Chinese academic, philosopher, playwright, human rights activist, and diplomat; and Dr. Charles Malik (1906-1987) a Lebanese academic, diplomat, philosopher, and politician ③.
During the early 20th century it was common for educated military men and diplomats to collect Chinese ceramics ④, both because they appreciated their great beauty and also because they represented an educated refinement. This vase is a high-quality example of such collecting taste.
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②: Rose Kerr, Jade Green and Kingfisher Blue. Longquan Wares from Museums and Art Institutes Around the World 梅青色醉笼泉窑 (ACC Art Books, Hong Kong, 2022), nos.163, 164, 167, pp.165-167.
③: https://talkabout.iclrs.org/2023/12/05/colonel-william-roy-hodgson/#:~:text=Colonel%20William%20Roy%20Hodgson%20is,returned%20to%20Australia%20at%20the, accessed 26 April 2024. The internet entry contains a photograph of Colonel Hodgson with Dr Malik.
④: See for example the collecting career of the British soldier Colonel R.J. Murdoch Smith (1835-1900), who amassed a large number of Chinese ceramics (including Yuan dynasty blue and white) for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Rose Kerr and Luisa E. Mengoni, Chinese Export Ceramics (V&A Publishing, London, 2011), pp.105-107.