Green Glazed Amphora, Late Sui – Early Tang Dynasty, 6th-7th c. A.D., China. Height: 23cm© Zetterquist Galleries.
A stoneware amphora with high-shouldered body and flattened foot. The long neck funnels up from the shoulders and is decorated with three deeply incised rings where the neck constricts, just below its flared cup-shaped mouth. Flanking either side of the shoulders are two thickly formed loop handles and a solid chicken head, representing the spout (nonfunctional in this case). A tall handle in the form of a dragon reaches up from the shoulder lute line, and bites down on the side of the cup-shaped mouth, its nose and snout obscured inside. The entire piece is covered in a dark translucent green glaze that pools to drips above the flat foot, revealing a dense stoneware body fired to a light grey color.
A similar piece with different handle treatment is published in Mayayama Seventy Years, Tokyo 1976. Pl. 106. Another is illustrated in “Sekai Touji Zenshu” Shogakukan, 1977. Vol. 11, pl. 170.
TL tested by Oxford Authentication, certificate number: P204d45