Mallet shape vase

[Stan]

Hi Peter, is this considered a Mallet shape and have you ever seen such a glaze, it is a small vase at 22.6 cm high, it has Guangxu mark and is heavily potted for such a small vase, I do not see any rust spots but then they could be hid with this type of glaze, There are dead bubbles but I am not sure if it is just the glaze that makes them look dark, very interesting vase any help would be appreciated thanks.

[Stan]

Here are the rest of the photo's, Thanks again.

[peterp]

First I would like to remind you and everyone reading this to not get deceived by crackles in the glaze. They develop in most glazes naturally in the kiln, but are often not visible as long as they are not dirty. They can be artificially created by opening the kiln doors early during the cooling process.

Red and green mineral glazes are both from the same base materials, either copper or iron. Finding green in red glazes was quite common (it was in the Ming dynasty), this may be caused due to insufficient control of kiln firing temperatures. Here it is a bit too obvious and I have doubts about this as in the late Qing dynasty this should not be so severe.
The mark does not look as if it is hand-written. Not sure what to make of it, but I'm suspicious.

[Stan]

Hi Peter, the mark is hand drawn, this is as good as I can get with this camera but under a magnifier it shows light to dark but it is hard to see.

[Stan]

I do not think this glaze was an accident but made that way, here is closer pic's of the glaze both sides.

[peterp]

I'm aware of this, Stan. But knowing the problems with red/green underglaze colors in the Yuan and early Ming dynasties I wonder why somewhat would want to reproduce that effect to such an extreme extent. To the very least you are probably aware that such items come up now because better decorations are becoming fewer on the market.
As to the mark, this was originally hand-written, but possibly applied with a transfer. Please have a look at the marked areas where the brush strokes are not natural.
Brush strokes do not suddenly get thinner or have intermittent white, thinned areas. The lines may start thick and have a thin end; or the other way round, depending on which type of stroke it is, and how the brush is applied and/or lifted off. To me the current mark looks as if the thinned lines were caused by a transfer or stamp, not direct writing by brush.
This all is not related to age, it concerns production methods. I could not be sure how old this is without a hands-on inspection.
BTW, I just noted that the glaze is not quite going down to the very bottom. This adds another thing. Guangxu items usually either go fully down or had to be clobbered, because the glaze run over the foot rim. This is especially frequent with red glazes. This is a problem of quality. This way there is a possibility that this is just a piece from an experimental firing that somehow got sold.
My personal opinion.

[peterp]

Sorry for my repeated posts, I have been thinking why it looks old but there are no decisive age signs as far as I can see.
The fact that (1) the bottom has no age signs and very clean, even  crackling, while the mouth and interior (2) have discolored crackles seems incongruent. Overall what I see in these pictures is nothing that points to this having been used. The initial impression of age is mainly from the condition of the exterior glaze.

[Stan]

Thank you Peter, Your insight is much appreciated, would this be called a drip glaze ?.

[peterp]

Not sure what a "drip" glaze actually is...there are all types of glaze applications, like dipping an item into the glaze, with smaller ones, spraying it on with mouth spray tool, brushing it on, etc. 
Do you mean because of the dots of other colors on the glaze? I do not know why there are darker green dots in the green glaze, but the green dots in the red glaze are a natural occurrence happening in the kiln. As mentioned before, such green dots in red glazes were more common in the early Ming dynasty and seem to have been caused by insufficient temperature control.


(BTW, I added the mark picture below which I had forgotten.)