large Meiping vase with dragons

[Stan]

Hi Peter, This vase looks very old, I wish I could have taken pictures of the inside but I could not get a photo of the inside, the inside has some fairly large gaps in the porcelain, it looks like it shrank when it was fired, it is all hand drawn and painted, I think the marks on top is a spurious Jiajing mark, I am not sure how old it is but the glaze has small pitting like dimples all through the glaze, there is rust spots on the outside as well as the inside and there is chatter marks on the bottom, the blue color almost looks like a Kangxi blue, please let me know what you think of age and the vase, thanks.

[Stan]

Here are another set of photo's to view.

[Stan]

Here is the last set of photo's to view, thanks.

[Stan]

Sorry I forgot to give you the size, it is 48.2 cm high, thanks again.

[peterp]

Hi Stan,
I'm afraid their are several oddities that make me doubt it is very old. The foot rim shape could be late Qing at the most, I think. A Ming vase of this size might have a flat bottom, or a flat (not rounded) foot rim.
The bottom seems to have both, chatter marks and spiral lines from throwing. Recently I have seen several large vases with Kangxi style decorations - there is something wrong with this. Chatter marks are predominantly found on items of some Ming reigns, and the 18th century. But on plates or bowls, not vases. With chatter marks the shaped item is turned over on the wheel, and the bottom is shaved, creating these marks. I doubt that this is how it is done with a vase. This is something that I need to ask someone who knows more about the manufacturing process.

The shape of the mouth would be Yuan, but I do not think later meiping vases had such a mouth.
Are there any marks exisiting where the characters are evenly distributed around the whole circumference of the shoulder? I remember only those which were  written closely together.
Alsio, as far as I know, if the dragon's body looks like a snake, it is suspicious. In this case the tail looks a bit too much curved.
In the enlarged pictures there are bubbles visible, but there are many more minute white dots which are not clear in the images. Are they tiny bubbles, or are they spots where the glaze surface is damaged?

Did you check if the vase was made in pieces? With such a vase I would think there would be at least three parts thrown separately, that were then stuck together.
Again, the bottom looks most suspicious. My personal opinion.

[Stan]

Hi Peter, yes the vase looks like it was made in three sections, the inside is clearly visible and the inside looks old, not like the new fakes, this looks pretty convincing of age to me, the white spots are large air bubbles that are all through the vase, I saw a similar meiping vase on Christies past lots with a dragon that was Identical and similar decoration it was late ming and a much darker blue.

[Stan]

Here is a picture of the whole top with all the marks, 6 total.

[peterp]

Stan, I asked about the small white spots. I can see that there are large air bubbles, the small white spots are not clearly visible; they seem to be too small. What I would like to know if these are tiny bubbles or if it is a tiny hole in the glaze.

You better ask an auction house rep for a second opinion if you want to sell it. Or, if you can find the same item on a well-known museum site. Unfortunately, the one you mentioned is the only one among the big three (up to now) that I have reservations about. They have repeatedly had items that would not necessarily pass a strict inspection, here. We do not think that if an item was auctioned this automatically means it is authentic.
(I have seen lots of Ming dynasty jars in the past six months and they never had such a bottom. As always, the decoration can be easily faked.)

[peterp]

I have to correct myself regarding the mouth. After looking again at the book of the "Cultural Artifacts Office" (exact English name not known) of China, it seems I was mistaken. The vase with a similar mouth shape as yours has a slightly different body shape. It seems there are two meiping mouth types: one is straight short neck with the rim turned outward; the other has a slightly conical top. I am not sure if that is because one is the type with a conical lid, and the other without lid, or just because they are older.
In case you are interested, this is the result of a Chinese language search: tinyurl.com/o37x825, just so that you can compare with the English image search. I guess a good part are fakes.

By the way, did you notice that the neck of your vase looks like celadon?

[Stan]

Hi Peter, the small white spots are air bubbles in the glaze there are also small pin hole glaze bursts, I think that is what you call them, but the small white spots are air bubbles through out the vase.

[connoisseurbear]

Hello Stan,

I found one similar piece for your vase, it is in a book called ???????????, p.463,
www.bjdips.com/gwh/result.aspx?ID=GWH-3448
Pic: www.bjdips.com/gwh/CQ/image/%E5%8C%97%E4%BA%AC%E6%95%85%E5%AE%AB%E9%A6%86%E8%97%8F%E9%99%B6%E7%93%B7%E5%99%A8%E8%B5%8F%E6%9E%90[463P]/93.jpg

[peterp]

To connoisseurbear:
Kindly repost the proper links to the actual pieces in the Palace Museum in Beijing. Basically, we want to avoid any links to commercial sites and private sites that are not well-known. Preferable are links to museums, research institutions and other organizations. It should be possible to find the direct links to the item. Thank you.

[And my apology, there should be notes and guidelines, and a FAQ at the top of each board, including the posting of links to exernal sites. In the course of moving the forum they seem to have disappeared. I will rewrite them if necessary.]

[Stan]

Hi Connoisseurbear, I looked at the vase, thank you for the site, I wish I could read Chinese, dose it say how old the vase is, I noticed that on their vase it has two dragons mine has four and as Peter mentioned, he has never seen a vase signed on the top spaced evenly around the circumference of the top, but it is the closest one I have seen yet, the color and shape look the same with slight differences in the shape and design, I have not seen a lappet design like the one on my vase at the top, the one shown on the site is a little larger than mine, I wish I could see the bottom, I did not click on the picture, I will try it again and see if there are other photos of the Meiping vase on the site, what is the site that I am looking at?

[peterp]

Hi Stan,
I have found it on the site of Palace Museum:  www.dpm.org.cn/shtml/117/@/5341.html
You won't often find a picture of the bottom on museum sites.
It seems there still are some dragons with a long tail, but otherwise I stand to what I said. See the mark. And glaze and blue color of yours are different from Ming items I have seen/handled.

Basically, the pale surface over the blue color made me suspicious, and that was why I asked about the bubbles, and if the glaze looks as if there are tiny holes in it, where the glaze surface is broken. I was thinking that it could have been treated with some acidic material to reduce the shine of the glaze.

[Stan]

Thanks Peter for your input, I agree with you on the signed top, do you have any Idea when something would have been signed that way,  the glaze was not treated with a chemical, using a 10x loop you can clearly see the air bubbles and not to mention as you already stated, the chatter marks, this is the third vase that I have purchased that has had both chatter marks and rings, the glaze on this vase makes me think possibly early 19th century, because I have never seen a late 19th century with a glaze that has small pitting or dimples through out the glaze as on this vase, I am pretty sure that it was fired that way, I have seen vases that were chemically treated and it dose not look like this, the glaze is consistent through out  and the small pitting looks natural to me.