Vintage Chinese Art Pottery Sgraffito Vase by Ming Jia

OVERVIEW

• Vintage item

This fascinating vase was made by Ming Jia Ceramics. This pottery is located in southern China in the city of Chaozhou, a famous ceramics center for 1300 years. The vase was created of heavy, cream colored stoneware type clay, the very modern body ridged and finished with a swirl in the bottom and formed without an upper lip or a foot.

There are several kinds of decorations on this piece. The exterior is covered with brushed on, pale brown matte glaze. The technique of sgraffito (cutting through the top layer) was then used in two ways. The first was to cut large irregular shapes that were filled with a glittering high gloss dark brown glaze coating a bumpy texture, surmounted by shiny glazed characters. Sgraffito was also used on the rest of the vase to scratch dozens of small characters through to the cream color. All of the characters appear to be be Chinese, but, since there are tens of thousands of those, we have not attempted to translate any of them.

This vase has an incised mark enclosed in a square on the bottom; it is a large capital letter M, with the name Ming Jia beneath. The vase is in wonderful condition; what looks like a chip on the bottom rim was actually created at the time the vase was made, as it is partly glazed. There is also a smudged area in the brown glaze that was also done in the making--it's about the size of a thumbprint and may actually be one.

Standing 5 1/2 inches tall, the vase has a 3 1/4 inch wide mouth and a 3 3/4 inch diameter bottom. It weighs just under two pounds. It's not only beautiful but tactile. Very decorative, very intriguing, very Asian....

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