Blue-and-white (General Meng Tian) Yuhuchun Vase
2 min readIn blue-and-white porcelain of the Yuan Dynasty, Celebrity Profile figure is one of the primary decoration themes, which mainly sources from script illustrations of the Yuan Drama. Theme decoration of vase abdomen demonstrates the scene that General Meng Tian interrogates captives. Between fifi gures, rocks, fences, trees, leaves, flfl owers, grass and other decorative patterns are dotted so that the whole picture is complex without chaos and fifi gures look vivid. This is a rare painting of the Yuan Dynasty. With gentle arc, this vase forms plump and well-proportioned body shape, which looks very beautiful. Pattern of nine red ruyi clouds are seen in mouth rim, and rolling branch lines are painted on ring foot. There are small particles in blue pattern on the vase body, which re- flfl ects the features of blue and white porcelain of Jingdezhen in the Yuan Dynasty. In rare blue-and-white porcelain of the Yuan Dynasty, this vase is a relatively mature artwork. Yuhuchun Vase with Celebrity Profifi le is rarer masterpiece.
Yuhuchun Vase
Yuhuchun Vase is a kind of porcelain shape, which can be attributed to furnishings. It is commonly used in flower arrangements. Its name comes from the famous poem of the Tang Dynasty, i.e., “Yu Hu Xian Chun”. It was created in the Song Dynasty, which was fifi red in the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, with many varieties. Yuhuchun Vase of the Yuan Dynasty is the most slender, with height of 30 centimeters, which is characterized by bulge mouth, thin neck, oval abdomen and protruding foot.
Blue-and-white porcelain
Blue-and-white porcelain is a kind of underglaze porcelain, which features white porcelain body, pure and transparent glaze and blue decorative patterns and designs. It adopts cobalt oxide as pigment to paint on the body, covers with transparent glaze, and then fires at high temperature of about 1300. Because cobalt oxide appears blue after burning at high temperature, it is customarily referred to as “blue and white”. As such craft presents decoration below the glaze layer, “underglaze blue and white” is also called.
Meng Tian (?-before 210 BC)
Meng Tian made great war exploits for the First Qin Emperor to unify the whole China. After the Qin Kingdom annihilated six kingdoms, he led the troop of 300,000 soldiers to repel the Huns, recaptured the south region of the Yellow River, and built the Great Wall. After the death of the First Qin Emperor, prime minister Li Si and treacherous court official Zhao Gao colluded with Hu Hai (the second son of the First Qin Emperor) to forged the will of the First Qin Emperor, usurped power of the Qin Kingdom, ordered Fu Su (the eldest son of the First Qin Emperor) and Meng Tian to make a suicide. Fu Su and Meng Tian were forced to make a suicide.
