An Extremely Rare And Magnificent Blue-Splashed 'Sancai' Pottery Money Chest, Tang Dynasty

An Extremely Rare And Magnificent Blue-Splashed 'Sancai' Pottery Money Chest, Tang Dynasty

the rectangular box raised on bracket feet with cream studs simulating the metal prototype, the sides reinforced with amber panels with crescent tops secured with further studs, and applied with blue lion-masks or palmettes, the top with a small hinge-lidded cover applied with a loop for the attachment of a lock, surrounded by four crisply rendered lion-mask appliqués.  1/8 x 9 x 6 3/4 in., 18.1 x 22.9 x 17.1 cm. Estimate 80,000—100,000 USD

The dating of this piece is consistent with the results of a thermoluminescence test, Oxford Authentication Ltd., no.C198w79.

PROVENANCE: Christie's Los Angeles, 4th December 1998, lot 71.
Christie's New York, 21st September 2000, lot 267.
Offered at Sotheby's New York, 17th September 2003, lot 47.

NOTE: Models of money chests, which would have been secured with a padlock, have been found in several Tang tombs, but are otherwise extremely rare.

The various extant chests differ in their applied ornaments and in glaze colors, and come in two different sizes. Whereas the use of cobalt-blue is generally found only on the smaller size, the present piece belongs to the larger type and is particularly richly adorned.

Two other pieces of this large size are glazed in sancai colors only, without any cobalt-blue: one of them excavated at Jinjiagou, Luoyang, Henan province and now in the Henan Provincial Museum is illustrated in Henan Sheng Bowuguan, Beijing, 1985, col.pl.156; the other is preserved in the Rietberg Museum, Zurich, and illustrated in Yuba Tadanori, Chûgoku no tôji, vol.3, Tokyo, 1995, col.pl.55.

Compare four chests of smaller size but with prominent areas of cobalt-blue, two of them excavated at Wangjiafen village in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an in Shaanxi province: one of these was included in the exhibition Gilded Dragons, The British Museum, London, 1999, cat.no.48; the remaining two pieces are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the St. Louis Art Museum, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics: The World's Great Collections, vol.10, Tokyo, 1980, fig.72; and in Mizuno Seiichi, Tôji taikei, vol.35, Tokyo, 1977, p.112, fig.39

Sotheby's. Chinese Works of Art. 17 Mar 09.New York www.sothebys.com Photo courtesy Sotheby's