Octagonal Headrest with Lotus and Sagittarius Decoration

This ceramic pillow, or headrest, has eight sides; six of the sides are of roughly equal length, but the front and back sides are slightly longer and lightly curved, imparting an overall bean shape to the piece. The subtly concave platform top, which served as the headrest, is boldly painted in dark brown slip with a loosely tied spray of lotus, sagittaria, and pond grass; the painting is further highlighted with lightly incised and combed details. A border of alternating thick and narrow lines encloses the scene and sets off the pillow's form, distinguishing the sides from the platform top. The steep, facetted sides are embellished with quickly brushed foliate motifs in the same dark brown slip as the top. Likely made at the Bacun kilns, in Yuxian county, Henan province, this octagonal headrest dates to the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. The technique of manufacture immediately associates this stunning piece with the Cizhou family of kilns, which are best-remembered for ceramics with underglaze decoration painted in brown or black slip on a white slip ground atop a light gray stoneware body. In this instance, the octagonal shape points toward Yuxian as the general area of origin, just as the linear borders, the frieze of stylized foliage around the sides, the closely focused floral design on the main face, the adherence of all the representational elements to the picture plane (without spatial recession), and the creation of pictorial details by incising through the dark slip to reveal the underlying white slip all point to the Bacun kilns as the specific place of manufacture. Many headrests survive from the Bacun kilns, just as numerous extant Cizhou pots (from various Cizhou kilns) sport decoration of lotus leaf, lotus blossom, and sagittarius sprig. This headrest is special, however, for its floral spray, which is tied with a ribbon whose gracefully fluttering ends complement the more rigid plant stalks, foreshadows the elaborate, fully developed lotus bouquets, also bound with ribbons, that sometimes emblazon large blue-and-white plates made during the Xuande reign (1426-1435) of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). This headrest thus reveals that some of the quintessential designs encountered on Ming-dynasty, imperial porcelains made at Jingdezhen, in Jiangxi province, were conceived and pioneered several centuries earlier by humble potters working at the distinctly non-royal, non-aristocratic Cizhou kilns. An old, Chinese, wooden storage box accompanies this piece. Several museum loan stickers appear on the base of the headrest.