1-233-572 - The Museum of East Asian Art/Heritage Images

Cizhou type sgraffito Yuhuchun vase with two phoenixes, early Yuan dynasty, China, late 13th-early 14th century. A Cizhou stoneware pear-shaped vase with bulbous body, long neck and everted lip of typical yuhuchun shape. The vase is decorated in the central horizontal section with two phoenixes among clouds, one has a five-streamer ribboned tail and the other has a two-streamer clobbered classic scroll tail. The top section has a stylised lotus petal pattern border and the bottom section a clobbered classic scroll border all done in sgraffito technique, in which the vase is carved through the white slip to the buff body and then covered by a transparent glaze. The foot and base are unglazed, showing the buff body. The depiction of phoenixes with differing tails as here seems a common feature in the Yuan period.