A Jizhou Brown-Painted Stoneware Wave Vase, MeipingProbably Yuan/early Ming dynasty
The vertical panels with molded edges painted with dense scrolling foliage below uneven bands at the neck and above vertically stacked waves on the body, further scrolls and bands above the foot.
7 1/4in (18.4cm) high注脚The Jizhou kilns situated in southern Jiangxi Provence, followed the tradition set up by the Cizhou kilns in Southern Hebei provence much further north, which during the previous decades had produced a wide variety of pottery wares often for utilitarian use and usually decorated with bold sweeping strokes often in brown hues, that depict naturalistic animals such as tigers, deer, and fish as well as the more fantastic dragons and phoenix. At Jizhou however, there was generally greater restraint used and a keener eye for detail. After the fall of the southern Song in 1279, the social and cultural environment changed, gone are the elegant and expensive wares and in came the decorated wares of kilns like Jizhou and later the kilns at Jingdezhen adopting similar designs but using underglaze cobalt on white porcelains.

The stylized wave pattern found on this vase was a favored motif of the Jizhou potters as was executed in various styles. A pear-shaped Jizhou vase with primarily wave decoration to the body from the Jiangxi Provincial Museum, China is illustrated in The World Of Khubilai Khan – Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, fig. 307.

For other examples depicting similar wave design or wave bands, see a fish jar and cover, Royal Ontario Museum, The T.T.Tsui Galleries of Chinese Art, Toronto, 1996, pl. 99; two small jars, Margaret Medley, Yuan Porcelain & toneware, London, 1974, pp.128-129, pls. 113a & b; and for a small vase and a censer, see Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Meiyintang Collection, Vol. 1, London, 1994, p.281, nos. 522 and 523.