Vase in the Shape of an Archaic Jade 'Cong' Ritual Implement

Square in section, this tall vase has a circular footring and a short, circular neck with lightly flaring walls. The vase is strongly archaistic in character, its shape deriving from an archaic ritual jade implement and its cracked grayish-blue glaze descending from imperial guan ware of the Southern Song period (1127-1279). The form was inspired by that of an archaic jade cong, a tube-like ritual implement that is square in section but that is perforated lengthwise by a cylindrical opening. The cong had appeared already in Neolithic times and was said by early writers to have been used in paying homage to the spirits of the earth. The height and the linear relief markings suggest that this vase follows a Neolithic Liangzhu-culture jade prototype from the third millennium BCE; although the eighteenth-century designer of this vase and the people who used it would have recognized the jade prototype as archaic, they would most likely have associated it with the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1050-221 BCE) rather than with a Neolithic culture, a concept unknown to them. The shape was first appropriated for flower vases during the Southern Song period in guan and Longquan wares. This vase differs from its Neolithic jade prototype 1) in having a solid base so that the vessel can hold water for the display of flowers; 2) in having straight, vertical walls rather than the slightly inclined walls of early cong; 3) in having walls that are wider in relation to the height seen in early cong, so that the overall proportions are less attenuated than those of a jade cong; and 4) in having the linear relief marks arranged in the trigrams of the 'Yijing" (Book of Changes) rather than the abstract, stylized masks seen on most cong. The vase differs from Southern Song cong-shaped guan-ware vases 1) in its much larger size; 2) in its arrangement of the relief markings in a pattern of trigrams; 3) in having a white porcelain body rather than a dark gray stoneware body; and 4) in its use of an imperial mark ont he base. The interior of the vase is completely covered with the same thick, light grayish-blue glaze that covers the exterior. A bold crackle pattern in charcoal-gray enlivens the glaze on the exterior and harmonizes with a delicate subsidiary crackle pattern in rust brown. The base is fully glazed, save the bottom of the footring, which was dressed with a dark grayish-brown slip to conceal the exposed porcelain body. This type of crackled grayish-blue glaze first appeared in the imperial guan ware of the Southern Song period. The guan glaze did not find favor with the Ming (1368-1644) rulers, who prefered the brighter colors of blue-and-white and/or polychrome-enamel-decorated porcelains, but it remained popular with the Ming literati whose taste for subtle monochrome wares descended from that of the Song court. The glaze regained imperial favor in the early eighteenth century when the court sought to not only perpetuate the imperial trappings of the MIng emperors but to appropriate the symbols of the literati, so that the emperors were presented as both scholars and rulers -- i.e., as perfect Confucian rulers. The underglaze cobalt-blue mark in seal-script characters on the base reads "Da Qing Qianlongnian zhi" (Made during the Qianlong reign of the Great Qing dynasty).