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Good afternoon forum..

This vase is H-9.5 in. with greenish/brown teadust like glaze. The glaze is controlled and stops before the reddish burnt or painted footrim (see pics). All opinions and responses are greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

This is a Chinese teadust glaze. Vessels made from this glaze often imitated ancient bronze ware. In this case a Song dynasty bottle vase. This glaze has been used for a long time since the Tang dynasty. However this vase appears to be Ching dynasty with iron glaze on it's feet. If it is authentic it probably dates around the daoguang period(mid19th century). With it's badly formed foot It would be a ming yao piece. However I don't see any porcelainous body on it's feet. It appears to be a more portery like material, in which case it could be a late 19th early 20th century Japanese imitation of a Daoguang teadust vase. Pls check feet a little closer if you can see any white porcelainous material.

Hello Yurike & Lee,

Rose Kerr indicates in her book 'Chinese Ceramics, Porcelain of the Qing Dynasty' that teadust glazes with their speckled greenish looks were produced by under-firing the iron oxide glaze. She notes that teadust was a conscious refinement of iron-spotted and streaked glazes first made in China during the Song dynasty (960-1279). The Palace Museum in Taipei notes in at least one of its catalog prefaces that work on precursor glazes to the teadust types that were perfected during the Yongzheng reign had been completed during the Kangxi period under the supervision of Zang Yingxuan at the imperial factory. These glazes had some 'colorful' names, including 'snake skin green' (shepi lu) and 'eel brown or yellow' (shanyu huang), among others.

I infer from what Ms Kerr says that unlike the under-fired teadusts, other iron-based glazes such as imitation bronze and celadons were high-fired at the extreme temperatures needed for vitrification. I further infer that perhaps the under-firing of teadust glazes made them suitable for pottery, though this is not stated clearly in the book.

The Liu Liang-yu survey of Qing ceramics has charts which would indicate that the form of Yurike's vase was produced during the Qing dynasty as early as the Qianlong reign. This makes me wonder if it might be plausible for this vase to have been made by a Qianlong-period minyao kiln instead of later. My postulation is that the technology would have been fairly widespread, 'up and running' so to speak, by the Daoguang years, whereas minyao kilns would still have been experimenting with these glazes during much of the Qianlong period.

Just a thought for discussion.

Best regards,

Bill H.

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