Some Thoughts on Ming? Celadon Wares

Bowl 1.

Bowl 1. Notice the flower motif on the base.

Bowl 1. The mark where the clay disk was placed is still visible. This is to stack the bowl on top of the next.

 These three grey-green and bluish green celadons were collected in separate instances. In each instance, I had to insist of getting the piece that has no damage or repair.  Too much previous tuition fees have forced me to be more stringent in my pickings.

I love looking at these three celadons especially when they're all in a row. They look modern in their simplicity but their greenness exude a certain "restrained" elegance.  The feel of the glaze is unctuous, the craqleur nice and spontaneous and the historicity of the item makes me giddy.  Speaking of historicity, picking up, holding it and feeling every smooth texture and earthy roughness makes me think of the tedious and ingenious process the Chinese did in making Celadon and the specialness of the Philippines as  a rich (and reasonably cheap) repository of burial ceramics. 

 

Bowl 2. Smallest of the lot. Notice the irregular glaze.

Bowl 2.

Bowl 2.

  We know that Celadon wares, be it white, green or blue-green usually come from the Song Dynasty.  A lot of collectors and dealers clump them together into this period. I too have been careless in assuming that this was so but I realized that this is an entirely huge field spanning the Song to the Yuan to the middle Ming Dynasties, and encompassing Thailand during the Ming Gap period. And with the periods went the various types of motifs used.

Bowl 3.  Same clay disk mark

Bowl. 3

If you go to the Koh Antiques Site (see link column) you will find examples pertaining to the Northern and Southern Song dynasty Celadons. Most have incised lotus patterns on the sides. In the case of my bowls, the striated lines form the chrysanthemum motif which can be found in Ming dynasty Celadons. This might explain why one of these bowls was part of a cache of burial ceramics that included Ming blue & white plates. It's unlikely that a person's lifetime accumulation spans several centuries with Song and Ming artifacts mingling together in a single plot. So, I think these were from the same time frame. Unless... unless... this is not Ming but rather Thai Celadon.  One of the pieces found in the book Chinese Celadons showed a similar striated bowl coming from Sawankhalok, Thailand.  This is the reason we ought to research on our items. It's a good thing this entry was inside Locsin's Oriental Ceramics Discovered in the Philippines:

So it's positive to be Ming. Nevertheless, what is important is the NOW- how these pieces affect me in a very pleasurable and positive way. I hope your collection does that to you too. Happy Antiquing!