Visual Analysis

Unknown, Tall Vase, Porcelain with copper-red glaze, c. 1730-1780, Ashmolean Museum,

Oxford (Originally from Jingdezhen Kilns, Jiangxi Province, China)

This vase has a red body and a white border around the mouth. The Tall Vase was originally made in the Jingdezhen Kilns, China, which is the most significant and highly valuable kiln in ancient China. Usually, this kind of vase was placed in the study of  intellectuals, which would brilliantly decorate the room. In a shape of the oval, the body of this piece of chinaware is red with some small white spots on the bottleneck and inner part. Instead of the top of the vase simply being half white and half red, the red semi-permeated into the white glazed bottom. Furthermore, the shape of this vase looks like a piece of garlic, which has a big “belly” and long, thin “neck”. Interestingly, even the main body is red, the “neck” of this vase is ivory white, which represents a special art method-keep blank-in China. From the luster of this object, it was made by white glaze, and on the top of the white glaze, the artisan used the red glaze (usually the pot was flipped in the copper mixture and then fired to turn red) to make the top color of this washer. From the smooth shape of this object, it looks like it was wheel thrown instead of coiling. And as the special pattern of the body shown, this kind of red and white pattern may like the famous one first made in Yuan dynasty (13CE) and became famous in the Ming and Qing dynasty (1400s-1800s), which was called Ji red, cowpea red, or Lang kiln red. It is a distinguished terminology describing the style of porcelain in the 18CE.