The jar has a handsome globular shape with full rounded sides gently curving to the low, wide neck that slants slightly inward and is finished with a rounded mouthrim. Supported on a relatively narrow base, the foot is wide and flat and the bottom is recessed. The very hard stoneware body is pale gray in color with black specks visible throughout. The interior is coated with a dark brown glaze while the exterior, aside from the neck, foot and base is covered with white slip which is the ground for dark brown slip painted floral and written decoration, protected by a thin layer transparent glaze. The design is organized in horizontal bands: the main body zone is decorated with a line of poetry written in bold, swiftly brushed large running-script characters aligned horizontally: Yan qian he shou xiong xin zai; jun zi sui pin zhi qi gao, “Though the tiger in front of the cliff is emaciated, he has a fierce heart; although the gentleman is impoverished, he is rich in knowledge.” The calligraphy is bordered below by a single line and above by scroll segments within series of lines and the shoulder with a wide band containing three giant lotus blossoms pointing downward alternating with upward facing leaves, all outlined in fine crisp lines and detailed with further lines, hooks, and dots, against a ground of swiftly drawn pencil thin parallel lines. The base is irregular and incised with a wide double circle.
The calligraphy on the present jar is executed with a sense of ease and spontaneity that only an individual trained in writing calligraphy could have accomplished, and the jar was most likely intended for a literate clientele who could appreciate not only the forceful style but the significance of the inscription as well. Calligraphy played a more important role in the decoration of Cizhou ware during the early Yuan period than it ever had before, likely the result of a scholarly class which found employment for its talents outside of the bureaucracy for which it was schooled. A large bottle intended for holding the wine that would have brought much pleasure to the lives of these very same individuals is decorated not only with well-written calligraphy in the body zone, but with a scrolling lotus on a striated ground painted on the shoulder which is also related to the present jar (fig. 1), a pattern seen again on a pair of meiping wine bottles discovered in Chifeng city, which also are decorated with calligraphy in the main body zone and with a segmented scroll on the shoulders similar to that which appears here (fig. 2). A basin in the Palace Museum in Beijing, attributed to the Bacun kiln in Henan province, is decorated with similar lotus in reserve against striations (fig. 3), the attribution based on kiln site excavations which have also demonstrated the use of calligraphy in the decoration of ceramics produced at the site (figs. 4–5). While the more refined drawing of the basin explains its pre-Yuan attribution, finds at the Yuan capital in Dadu in the vicinity of present-day Beijing (figs. 6–7) as well as a number of examples dated by their inscriptions to the Yuan period (figs. 8–9) are characterized by looser designs and more casual execution, also characteristic of the present jar.2
The inscriptions on these painted ceramics consist of poetic phrases often reflecting the character of the refreshing contents of the vessels and sometimes just auspicious turns of phrase, such as appear on the meiping from Chifeng. The inscription on the present jar, however, reflects a more profound sentiment. The “tiger” of the first line (“Though the tiger in front of the cliff is emaciated, he has a fierce heart”) represents the scholar and his plight under Mongol rule, while the second line (“although the gentleman is impoverished, he is rich in knowledge”) shows the great pride that might sustain the scholar through this period when gainful employment was difficult to come by. The fact that these lines could very well express the heart of the individual who actually brushed them, makes the jar an even more poignant creation in the eye of the beholder today.
1. Transcription and translation by Arnold Chang.
2. Also see Kaikodo Journal, IX, Autumn 1998, no. 66, pp. 166–167 and 256–257 for a large Cizhou jar with characters advert. Its massive shape is typical of wine jars produced at Cizhou kilns during the last half of the Ming dynasty during the 16th and 17th century. The dated examples to 1557, 1571, 1573, and another almost 100 years later to 1660, also exhibit similar motifs and painting style.
Fig. 1: Cizhou-ware bottle with calligraphy, Yuan, late 13th–14th century, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, after Margaret Medley, Yuan Porcelain and Stoneware, London, 1974, pl. 100B.
Fig. 2: Cizhou-ware meiping with calligraphy and floral design, Yuan, late 13th–14th century, excavated in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, after Beifang wenwu, 1995:1, pl. 2, fig. 1.
Fig. 3: Cizhou-ware basin with floral design, Song, 12th–13th century, attributed to the Bacun kilns, Palace Museum, Beijing, after Zhongguo wenwu jinghua daquan, taoci juan, Hong Kong, 1993, no. 451, p. 304.
Fig. 4: Cizhou-ware painted ceramic shards excavated at Bacun, Yuxian, Henan in 1977, dated Northern Song to Yuan, after Ceramic Finds from Henan, pl. 97, p. 126.
Fig. 5: Section of a large Cizhou-ware vase, excavated at Bacun, Yuxian, Henan, after Wenwu, 1964:8, pl. V:1.
Fig. 6: Cizhou-ware jar with phoenix design, Yuan, early 14th century, excavated at the site of the Yuan capital at Dadu, after Kaogu, 1972:6, pl. II:3.
Fig. 7: Cizhou-ware jar with calligraphy, Yuan, early 14th century, from a site in Beijing, after Kaogu, 1973:5, fig. 5, p. 281.
Fig. 8: Cizhou-ware bottle with calligraphy, dated to 1281, after The Cizhou Kiln Site at Guantai, Beijing, 1997, pl. CXXVI:7.
Fig. 9: Cizhou bottle with calligraphy, dated to 1353, Buffalo Museum of Art, after The Cizhou Kiln Site at Guantai, Beijing, 1997, pl. CXXVII:9.
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