Vase

"Splendid" was the way that Freer described this cobalt blue glazed vase decorated with a barely discernible incised floral design. He believed it to be an ancient Chinese vessel from the Han dynasty. The first director of the Freer Gallery of Art, John Lodge, was unconvinced: "Don't know what this is," he confessed in an undated note. Most recently, scholars of ceramics have speculated that this vase may have been the product of a late nineteenth-century European art pottery studio, though the gold-lacquer repair on the foot indicates that it may have passed through Japan at some point. In any event, it was the mottled, brilliant blue color-and not the historical origins of the piece-that most interested Freer. In the Peacock Room in Detroit, he displayed it to the right of La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine, surrounded by iridescent pieces of Raqqa ware.