The three gourd-shaped bottles are fashioned with spherical lower lobes and slightly elongated ovoid upper lobes, a constricted short waist between the lobes of each and both surmounted by an upright neck with rounded lip rim. The vessels are supported on short, wide circular foot rings encircling countersunk bases, the feet similar in appearance to jade bi disks. The foot rims are unglazed and reveal the white porcelain bodies while the glazes on the recessed bases exhibit some crawling and minor flaws. Vivid cobalt blue outlines and intense blue washes beneath a clear colorless glaze depict scrolling lotus vines, four equally spaced large blooms on the lower bulb and two on the upper bulb, all borne on stems with foliate, multi-lobed leaves along with simpler trefoil leaves issuing from the stems while the decorated zones are bordered by bands of delicate herringbone design.
The gourd was used as a model for ceramic shapes already during the Neolithic period in China and continued to inspire potters ever after. The form, consisting of a large lower and smaller upper lobe, was most suitable for storing, pouring, and even drinking libations, providing voluminous interior capacity while at the same time the constricted waist between the two lobes offered a convenient way to grasp or suspend the vessel. Aside from its utilitarian function, the significance of the gourd in Chinese culture relates in part to its prominence in fertility cult paraphernalia and practices. The presence of images of fish and frogs on the earliest ceramic wares fashioned in this distinctive shape suggests also a connection with the fruits of China’s bounteous waterways. Further, gourds were used by Daoist practitioners for the collection, storage and imbibing of the elixir of immortality and the belief in the efficacy and magic of gourds is well established on various levels in Chinese myth and legend.
To return to the mundane, the gourd when rendered by artists and craftsmen undergoes transformation over time and the present type with spherical lower lobes and egg-shaped uppers lobes with wide waists and short upright necks is associated with porcelains produced during the Kangxi reign era (1662-1722) of the Qing dynasty.1. Almost identical vessels in Cheshire’s Lady Lever Art Gallery were illustrated by Hobson in Chinese Porcelain & Wedgwood Pottery with Other Works of Ceramic Art, London, 1928, no. 216, and although they are of slightly different sizes than the three here, they are otherwise the same in form and décor (fig. 1).
1. See line-drawn illustrations of the characteristic ceramic shapes of the various Ming and Qing reign periods, comparing especially the Kangxi gourd-shaped vessel similar to the present in fig. 332:10, p. 187 with the contrasting gourd-shaped vessel forms of the Yongzheng (figs. 393:1-3 and 9, p. 231) and Qianlong (figs. 444:1-9, p. 260) periods in Geng Baochang, Ming Qing ciqi jianding, Beijing, 1993.
Fig.1. Three underglaze-blue decorated gourd-shaped porcelain bottles, Kangxi period, after https://elogedelart.canalblog.com/archives/2010/12/30/19996739.html
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