Vietnamese Black & White Birds in Flight Vase

Details

Description

Some pieces earn a second look the moment you notice the detail packed into a small space. At a glance … Read more Some pieces earn a second look the moment you notice the detail packed into a small space. At a glance it's a compact black-and-white vase; up close, two birds sweep across the shoulder over stylized rockwork, a column of brushed script runs down one side like a fragment of a poem, and a band of mountain peaks circles the neck. A skirt of short vertical strokes rings the base just above an unglazed, warm reddish footring, the kind of honest, unpolished detail that tells you a human hand turned this on a wheel. The iron-black underglaze painting is the older, less common cousin of Vietnam's better-known cobalt blue-and-white export ware, a decorative tradition of its own with roots in the Tran dynasty kilns north of Hanoi.
On a shelf or console today, its baluster shape and graphic black-on-white contrast read as confidently modern as they do historic, equally at home alone or grouped with a few other small vessels.

**Please bear in mind that colors of products shown may vary slightly from their original color due to monitor display settings or photography studio See less