Pear Shape Antique Vietnamese Bottle Vase

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There's a particular grey cast to this blue that gives it away before anything else does. Chinese cobalt of this … Read more There's a particular grey cast to this blue that gives it away before anything else does. Chinese cobalt of this era tends toward a cleaner, more saturated blue, while Vietnamese kilns working with local cobalt sources produced this softer, smokier tone, and it's all over this little pear-shaped bottle, in loosely painted florals, a scrolling cloud motif at the shoulder, a small roundel below the neck. Turn it over and the story confirms itself, an unglazed footring in warm reddish stoneware, fired unevenly the way hand-thrown fifteenth and sixteenth century Vietnamese export ware typically was. Pieces like this one were made in huge quantities for Southeast Asian trade, and a significant number of the surviving examples in today's market come from documented shipwreck hoards, most famously the Hoi An hoard recovered off the Vietnamese coast in the 1990s, though we can't confirm this particular piece's exact origin without provenance. What survives is a small, unpretentious vessel with real age in its glaze and real history in its form. Let it stand alone on a shelf where the crackled glaze and that grey-blue painting can be seen up close, it's a piece that rewards a second look far more than a first.

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