Green-splashed pottery ewer - China, Liao dynasty (907-1125)

A rare Chinese Liao dynasty (907-1125) copper green-splashed pottery ewer. The elegant melon-shaped body on shallow foot with (pleasantly irregular) curved handle covered in an off-white glaze with three dark green splashes to the body. Height 23cm. Condition is good overall. The ewer has been checked under UV light and there are no visual areas of restoration. The copper splash turns green in low firing (it turns red/purple in high firing).
Provenance: From a private collection in Buckinghamshire.

After the demise of the Tang dynasty, the Liao dynasty ruled much of what we know today as northern and north-eastern China (Manchuria), Mongolia and parts of the Russian Far East and North Korea from 916 to 1125 and was contemporary with the first half of the Song dynasty.
As such, Liao dynasty ceramics produced in Manchuria followed the traditions of the Tang whiteware and the three-colour sancai but because the Liao were largely people from non-literate nomadic tribes, they also developed their own artistic styles of Liao ceramics.
Jorge Welsh: “the ceramics of the Liao dynasty (947-1125), a Qidan empire bounded on the south by the Great Wall in northern Shanxi, on the east by northern Hebei and including the province of Liaoning and, broadly speaking, the whole of Inner Mongolia. Although the period of Liao rule overlaps with the Song government in China, Liao pottery is not a provincial manifestation of Song methods and styles, but in essential aspects shows the survival through the Liao period of types and techniques that prolong Tang-dynasty standards.”