Dish

Dish

late 10th-early 11th century

Gift of Charles Lang Freer

Dr. Horace N. Allen

Porcelain with transparent ivory-toned glaze

Ding ware

HxW: 3.8 x 15.6 cm

F1907.312

http://141.217.97.109/plugins/Dropbox/files/peacock-jpg/JPEG/F1907.312.jpg

2

213

West

Northern Song dynasty

China

United States

Toledo

OH

Bottle with three green splashes

Bottle

Guantai kiln

This bottle, with the distinctive splashes of green along its shoulder, was purchased from the New York shop of Yamanaka and Company. The dealer told Freer that it had been found in Korea and was thought to have been made there. Freer, however, later suspected—correctly—that it was Chinese and from the Song dynasty. Accordingly, he displayed it in the Peacock Room in Detroit adjacent to other Song ceramics.

late 10th - 11th century

Gift of Charles Lang Freer

Yamanaka and Co.

Stoneware with white slip under clear, colorless glaze; three splashes of copper-green glaze

Cizhou ware

HxW: 33.1 x 15.4 cm

F1905.79

http://141.217.97.109/plugins/Dropbox/files/peacock-jpg/JPEG/F1905.79.jpg

2

92

South

Northern Song dynasty

China

United States

New York

New York

Vase

Vase

This melon-shaped Ch'ing-pai ware vase has a brilliant white porcelain body that is tinted with an almost transparent blue glaze. It was purchased by Freer in 1907 as part of a group acquisition from a fellow collector, Horace Allen, who had amassed a significant group of ceramics during his time as a missionary in Korea. Of his vase, Allen had written "It is pronounced by those collectors who have seen it to be the finest piece of white Korai they have seen." He declared it "perfect," and Freer may have agreed, selecting it to be among the ceramics on prominent view in the Peacock Room. The origins of this piece, though once believed to be Korean, are now known to be eleventh-century Chinese, from the Northern Song dynasty.

11th century

Gift of Charles Lang Freer

Dr. Horace N. Allen

Porcelain clay with transparent pale blue (qinqbai) glaze

Qingbai ware

HxW: 26.1 x 13.7 cm

F1907.289

http://141.217.97.109/plugins/Dropbox/files/peacock-jpg/JPEG/F1907.289.jpg

2

64

East

Northern Song dynasty

China

United States

Toledo

OH

Ewer

Ewer

This Chinese porcelain ewer was excavated from a Goryeo dynasty tomb in Korea. It was acquired by Horace Allen, who first traveled to Korea in 1884 as a Presbyterian medical missionary. Allen, who was later named ambassador, went on to assemble a remarkable collection of ceramics, many taken from the tombs of Korean nobility. Freer purchased his entire set of eighty pieces when it was offered for sale in 1907. He went over the collection with the scholar Ernest Fenollosa, who immediately wondered, "Can some of them be Chinese?" More recent scholarship has confirmed Fenollosa's hunch: this ewer, and some of the other pieces acquired from Allen, are now understood to be Chinese and to date to the Song dynasty. They document the extensive use of imported Chinese ceramics by the Goryeo nobility.

late 11th-early 12th century

Gift of Charles Lang Freer

Dr. Horace N. Allen

Porcelain with transparent pale blue (<i>qingbai</i>) glaze

Qingbai ware

HxW: 22.0 x 12.1 cm

F1907.285

http://141.217.97.109/plugins/Dropbox/files/peacock-jpg/JPEG/F1907.285.jpg

2

63

East

Northern Song dynasty

China

United States

Toledo

OH