Antique / Vintage Chinese Ginger Jar Early Mid 20th Century

Antique / Vintage Chinese Ginger Jar Early Mid 20th Century

Very well hand decorated

Excellent Condition ( No Chips or Cracks )

Height : 18cm
Diameter : 14cm

Any Questions Welcome

When the Chinese Republic was founded in 1912, it was no wonder that the lotus flower, revered in Chinese culture for rising unblemished out of murky waters, became a dominant theme throughout this emerging nation’s art in the following decades.  The preceding fifty years had seen China lurch from the stranglehold of Western imperial powers to the overthrow of the centuries old Qing dynasty in the Xinhai Revolution resulting a delicate political balance that would descend into a brutal civil war through the 1920s, 30s and 40s, punctuated only by the additional conflict of the Second Sino-Japanese War.  To the country’s ceramic artists, no strangers to the political aspect of their work as expressions of China’s most revered art form, the lotus must have seemed a particularly apt emblem of their nation: a tremulous flower, pure but delicate, emerging from a foul pool only to be buffeted by brutal elements.

Lot 1669 in the Asian Works of Art Auction at McTear’s is just such an example: dating from the Republic period, this piece has been finely enamelled with lotus sprays and scrolls as the dominant aesthetic theme.  Many ceramics which come for sale throughout Britain and further afield are dated as ‘Republican’, much of the time erroneously, so how can we determine that this piece is of the Republic Period and why is this a desirable date of attribution?