A LARGE BLUE AND WHITE SIX-TUBE ARROW VASE, TOUHU, MING DYNASTY, TL TESTED 明代青花投壺式瓶Please note this Lot is to be sold at No Reserve. 本拍品不設底價Scientific Analysis Report: A thermoluminescence analysis report issued by Oxford Authentication on 15 February 2024, based on sample number P124b27, sets the firing date of two samples taken between 400 and 600 years ago, and hence is consitent with the dating of this lot. A copy of the report, signed by Helen Mason for Oxford Authentication, accompanies this lot.Expert’s note: The six small and rather unusual lion heads applied on the shoulder of the present vase once suspended bronze rings, which have long been lost to time. It is possible that these rings were used to keep score when playing touhu with this vase, since there is exactly one lion head for each of the six arrow tubes.China, 16th to early 17th century. The pear-shaped body supported on a waisted foot and rising to a slender neck, the mouth applied with six tubular arrow holes, the shoulder with six pierced lion heads. Finely decorated to the exterior in shades of cobalt blue with scholarly figures and their attendants inside a fenced garden with large willows, below a band of ruyi heads at the shoulder. The neck with three magpies on a prunus branch and a large pine tree, the mouth and arrow lugs with floral designs, the foot with a band of lotus petals.Provenance: From a private collection in Paris, France.Condition: Expected old wear and firing irregularities, including burst bubbles, black spots, firing cracks, glaze recesses, and kiln grit. The neck with a horizontal luting line showing an old fill, visible also on the inside, and associated glaze lines. Minor smoothened chips to the foot and occasional light scratches. Two holes from sample drilling.Weight: 3,136 g Dimensions: Height 38.3 cmArrow vases were made for a drinking game called ‘touhu’ (lit. ‘pitch-pot’), which had been popular among elite men and women from the Spring and Autumn period of the Eastern Zhou dynasty. The Ming-dynasty Emperor Xuande was known to be quite fond of the game, as evidenced by a painting of him playing touhu by Shan Xi (in the Palace Museum, Beijing). Players threw arrows into bronze or ceramic vases with narrow tubular necks at prescribed intervals, each player equidistant from the vase. The winner successfully projected all his arrows into the vase and the loser was forced to drink at each miss. Elaborate rituals and intricate rules, recorded in the Li Ji (Book of Rites), added further complexity to the game. Puzzling pitching techniques were described in the Touhu Yijie (Ceremonial Usages and Rules of Touhu), an illustrated manual written by Wang Ti (1490-1530), and these shots were given fancy names, like ‘A Pair of Dragons Enters the Sea’ when two arrows were thrown from a great height at once into the vase. The touhu game was used to practice archery, one of the essential accomplishments of a gentleman. Later in the Ming era, the game became more widespread, being played by rich merchants as well as the aristocracy and scholarly elite. A scene in the famous late Ming novel Jin Ping Mei (Plum Blossom in the Golden Vase), written in 1619, describes the wealthy merchant Ximen Qing's seduction of his concubine Panjinlian. She becomes inebriated while playing touhu on a picnic and the game leads to an amorous encounter. For a further discussion of the game see Isabelle Lee, Touhu: Three Millennia of the Chinese Arrow Vase and the Game of Pitch-pot, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, vol. 56, 1991-2, pp. 13-7.Literature comparison: Compare a related Cizhou painted arrow vase, 40 cm high, dated to the Ming dynasty, circa 1522-1566, in the collection of the British Museum, museum number 1937,0716.74.Auction result comparison: Type: Related Auction: Galerie Zacke, Vienna, 29 September 2022, lot 106 Price: EUR 26,000 or approx. EUR 27,500 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing Description: A very large and extremely rare Cizhou painted arrow vase, touhu, Ming dynasty Expert remark: Compare the related form, albeit with fewer and larger arrow holes and lacking the animal masks, and similar size (40 cm).
