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A RARE GREEN AND OCHRE-GLAZED DRAGON LOTUS-FORM CANDLEHOLDER Tang Dynasty image 1
A RARE GREEN AND OCHRE-GLAZED DRAGON LOTUS-FORM CANDLEHOLDER Tang Dynasty image 2
A RARE GREEN AND OCHRE-GLAZED DRAGON LOTUS-FORM CANDLEHOLDER Tang Dynasty image 3
Lot 61

A RARE GREEN AND OCHRE-GLAZED DRAGON LOTUS-FORM CANDLEHOLDER
Tang Dynasty

14 December 2023, 17:00 EST
New York

Sold for US$61,440 inc. premium

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A RARE GREEN AND OCHRE-GLAZED DRAGON LOTUS-FORM CANDLEHOLDER

Tang Dynasty
The central stem applied with two entwined and coiling slender-bodied dragons, one glazed ochre, the other green, and each with one foreleg raised to dually support a lotus-petal-shaped upper drip pan with similar alternate glazed petals to the exterior and a green glaze to the interior that is centered by an ochre-glazed cylindrical candleholder, the larger lower drip pan with an ochre glaze and supported on a green-glazed short spreading foot, the foot interior un-glazed and revealing the pale buff pottery.
8in (20.3cm) high

Footnotes

唐 黃綠彩盤龍蓮瓣燭臺

Provenance
Christie's Los Angeles, 4 December 1998, lot 51 and attributed to late Sui-early Tang dynasty (late 6th-early 7th century)

來源
洛杉磯佳士得拍賣行,1998年12月4日,拍品編號51,定為隋末至唐初(紀元六世紀末至七世紀初)

For a very similar example see Kaikodo Journal V, Hong Kong, 1997, p. 206, no. 62, where the authors discuss the use of candles among the Tang nobility. Compare also with a very similar, green-glazed example illustrated in the Tsui Museum of Art, Chinese Ceramics I, Hong Kong 1993, no. 84, which bears a cover suggesting its possible use as a censer.

Compare the similarly modeled candleholder in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, illustrated by Tseng and Dart, The Charles B. Hoyt Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts: Boston, Volume I, Boston, 1964, no. 63, and another illustrated by William Watson, Tang and Liao Ceramics, Friborg, 1984, p. 46, pl. 26 and dated to the 7th century from the Cleveland Museum of Art, with lotus petals to the lower part rather than the pan of this example. See also the Tang dynasty candleholder with coiled dragons in the collection of the Beijing Palace Museum, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Porcelain of the Jin and Tang Dynasties, Hong Kong, 1996, p. 185, no. 171.

Candleholder of this type exists as early as Sui dynasty. Compare, for several Sui dynasty examples, the straw-glazed white boshanlu with coiled dragon support in the collection of the Yamato Bunkakan, Nara, illustrated in the catalog of the exhibition organized by the Nezu Institute of Arts, Tang Pottery and Porcelain, Tokyo, 1988, p. 24, no. 9, together with a green-glazed boshanlu with coiled dragon support, in the collection of the Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo, on p. 25, no. 10, and a straw-glazed white candleholder with coiled dragon support in the collection of the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art on p. 25, no. 11.

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