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Asian Art
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Photo credit: Yale University Art Gallery
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Photo credit: Yale University Art Gallery
Jar
early 8th century c.e.
Earthenware with cobalt-blue lead glaze
5 1/2 × 6 1/4 in. (13.97 × 15.88 cm)
Wayland Wells Williams, B. A. 1910, Collection, Gift of Mrs. Frances Wayland Williams
1947.77
The dark blue glaze covering this jar derives from cobalt, an oxide ore that was later used as a pigment for blue-and-white porcelain—the development of which in the mid-fourteenth century changed the course of global ceramic history. Mines in the Henan and Gansu Provinces may have been the source for the native cobalt that first decorated funerary and trade ceramics in the eighth and ninth centuries C.E.
Geography:
China
Status:
On view
Culture:
Chinese
Period:
Tang dynasty (618–907 C.E.)
Classification:
Containers - Ceramics
Provenance:
Eumorfopoulos Collection; bought at the Eumorfopoulos Sale at Sotheby's, London, May 28, 1940, no. 42 (through Bluett and Sons)
Bibliography:
R. L. Hobson, The Catalogue of the George Eumorfopoulos Collection of Chinese, Corean, and Persian Pottery and Porcelain, 6 vols. (London: Ernest Benn, Ltd., 1925), Cat. 1, no. 336, pl. 51.
R. L. Hobson, The George Eumorfopoulos Collection: Catalogue of the Chinese, Corean, and Persian Pottery and Porcelain, 6 vols. (London: E. Benn, ltd., 1925–28), no. 336, pl. 51.
George J. Lee, Selected Far Eastern Art in the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970), 22–23, no. 31, ill.
Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.
