Vase

This striking Ming dynasty stoneware vase with a translucent crackled glaze was loaned by Freer to several exhibitions during his lifetime, including a 1914 presentation at the Japan Society of New York, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1916, where it was part of an exhibition of "early Chinese pottery and sculpture." Freer had purchased it in 1908 from the New York gallery of Yamanaka and Company. Later that same year, he placed it in the Peacock Room on a prominent shelf adjacent to Whistler's painting La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine and flanked by a pair of similarly tall, slender Southern Song tomb jars.