Vase
Category
Ceramics
Date
1715 - 1725
Materials
Porcelain, iron, manganese, cobalt
Measurements
260 mm (Height)
Place of origin
Jingdezhen
Order this imageCollection
Belton House, Lincolnshire
NT 433348.2
Summary
One of a pair of vases, porcelain, of rouleau shape (cylindrical, with slightly narrower, raised necks), made in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China, 1715–25, decorated with a black glaze (called ‘mirror black’ or ‘miroir noir’) and painted in gold with birds perched in prunus trees and with bamboo.
Full description
The black glaze on these vases contains iron, manganese and cobalt, which creates a highly reflective surface imitating polished metal mirrors, as noted by the French Jesuit Francois-Xavier d’Entrecolles (1664–1741). While on a visit to Jingdezhen in 1712, Père d’Entrecolles wrote a letter describing the manufacture of Chinese porcelain wares. In China, this glaze is known as wujin you (乌金釉 ‘black bronze glaze’). By 1721, Augustus II (known as ‘the Strong’), Elector of Saxony (1670–1733), had several vases and other examples of black-glazed porcelain with painted decoration in gold (see Shulsky 2003). This pair of vases (together with pair NT 433348.1-2) may be referred to in the 1754 Belton inventory, room no. 39 (presumed to be the Chapel Drawing Room): ‘2 pair of black and gold bottles’. One of these vases was illustrated in Country Life magazine, 31 October 1903, p. 615.
Provenance
Purchased by the National Trust with support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, 1984.
References
Shulsky 2003: Linda Rosenfeld Shulsky, ‘Famille noire und mirror-black: Das europäische Interesse an schwarzgrundiger chinesischer Keramik aus der K’ang-hsi-Zeit und deren Beziehung zu Lack’, in Monika Kopplin (ed.), Schwartz Porcelain, Munich, 2003, pp. 61–75 and cats. 23–33