CHINESE BLUE AND WHITE KO-SOMETSUKE SQUARE-SECTION CENSER
MING DYNASTY, 16TH-17TH CENTURY
Estimate: £1,200 - £1,800
Auction: 16 May 2025 from 09:00 BST
Description
明 青花高士靈鹿圖方爐 共箱
painted with a seated scholar facing a boy carrying a large urn of wine with ladle, his back with a peach on a low rock-table behind a fence separating a deer, with a Japanese wooden tomobako
Dimensions
10cm high
Provenance
Private collection, London; formerly in a private Japanese collection
倫敦私人收藏；前日本私人收藏
Footnote
Possibly made as a charcoal container as peripheral to the Japanese tea culture. Normally in octagonal or hexagonal forms, square and circular hot charcoal containers were also produced but seem rather rare. This vessel was designed and produced for a specific function, one clearly described in an entry on a hexagonal example by Julia Curtis in her ground-breaking exhibition catalogue on kosometsuke: “Once filled with ash, this hexagonal charcoal container would have held a piece of burning charcoal with which to light a pipe. In Japan, tobacco became fashionable with tea devotees in the early seventeenth century. The host would place a tobacco tray (tobako-bon), holding pipes, a container for loose tobacco, and a charcoal container inside the waiting room for use before the tea ceremony.” See Julia Curtis, Trade Taste & Transformation: Jingdezhen Porcelain for Japan: 1620-1645, New York, 2006, p. 87.