Chinese Pottery Figure of a Bird with a Little Bird on Its Back, Tang (618-906)

Ref: A2667

£ 380

Price is subject to availability and market conditions.

Chinese pottery figure of a bird with a little bird on its back, Tang (618 - 906), Waxhaping kiln, Changsha, the bird with a short tail, long curving neck and feathered head, the smaller bird perched upon its back; all covered with a mottled brown lead glaze

Dimensions:

Height: 6.4cm. (2 1/2in.)

Condition:

Chip to base (scratch to body, please see image)

Notes:

The kilns at Changsha in Southern China were active by the end of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and became a key site for the manufacture of ceramics for domestic and export consumption. During the construction of railways across northern China in the 1920s, hundreds of Tang burial sites were discovered; the ceramics they contained were largely shipped to European institutions and so the most well known category of Tang ceramics in Europe to this day remains the sancai burial wares. The Changsha kilns experimented with glaze technology; the brown glaze seen here was achieved by overloading a lead-rich base with iron oxide.