Help With Shiwan Ware Seal Script Translation and Motif

Trying to understand the event or storyline the potter was trying to show on this 1920 Shiwan vase.

I do not know if understanding it means looking at these characters as pictograph images to create a storyline, or if the story can be revealed if translated to modern Chinese characters.

I found an exact pictograph match for one, "spring water flowing from a cave or from the mouth of a spring". A second pictograph may be "breaking through soil" (the lower part of the one pictograph).

Either way, I do not know what I am doing or how to understand the meaning or story behind the motifs on this piece.

Would like very much to know, and will greatly appreciate any help

 

Aren't they just Chinese coins?

 

These are Chinese versions of Japanese Sumida ware, it is sometimes call Poo ware (after a Chinese maker of this style). The vases are 20th century and the symbols are archaic Chinese, so it is a bit like someone in the uk putting Celtic runes on a pot and selling it in a Wicca shop. As such I wouldn't read too much into the historic symbology, and as you have identified it looks like there may even be some errors in how the potter formed some of the archaic symbols (just like we would make errors transcribing runes we know nothing about). In general the Chinese coin shapes would be for good luck, prosperity etc and have symbols for this, whereas this pottery has gone for archaic symbols instead. The vases are likely 1910-35 in period.

 

Thank you so very much Ce BCA. So it is Shiwan in the style of Sumida, very interesting !

Many times it seems these archaic symbols have errors and we are left to try and decipher them in part based on the Sculptors interpretation of them and I think a degree of illiteracy.

While on my daily ritual of hunting for Shiwan ware, I was surprised to find a second Shiwan vase very similar to this one. Because of the similarities, seems there might have been a specific event or occasion that the potter was influenced by.



Would you place this in the same Shiwan made to imitate Sumida category ?

 

Typically with Sumida ware the characters are the decoration rather than integral to the application, although I have seem some almost toby jug like Sumida pieces. It is certainly in the same vein though.

I'm not sure if Poo ware (Chinese) or Sumida was produced first, and I think they were roughly around the same time, so matching styles rather than one imitating the other I think.

 

Thank you

 

I have this vase in hand now so wanted to come back and share it.

Every website that mentions Poo ware or Poo You-she have copy and pasted the information from Jan-Erik at the Gotheborg website

Have not found any scholarly reference about Poo ware or Poo You-shi. Neither are either mentioned in any of my Shiwan books.

I do believe pieces like these were influenced by Sumida and Banko pottery, but the Shiwan potter and Poo ware is a bit of a mystery.

Don't know what the odds are that I stumbled onto a second similar vase, but even far greater are the odds that all three of these from different sellers share the same fish shaped potters mark. So of course they are all from the same family Shiwan kiln.

For now it feels like referencing this particular Shiwan potter or Poo ware is speculative with no supporting written references or known pieces by him.

I thought that maybe this information could have been orally passed on to Jan-Erik while he visited the Shiwan kilns in 2005. So have sent him a message asking, waiting to hear back.

Maybe some day I will discover which kiln this potters mark is from.

 

I think Jonas Gunnarsson from the Facebook group Collecting Japanese Ceramic Arts has solved the mystery and excludes any possibility of my vases having been made by anything called "Poo ware", which I think there is no such thing as mentioned on the Gotheborg website.

I have been focusing to much on making a connection between a Poo ware and Poo You-she mentioned on the Gotheborg website. Which Jonas figured out is in Wade Giles system and should actually be, "Pú Yu-Shi" or "Pú Yu-Zhi" whom he has learned is actually another name for the famous Shiwan potter, Pan Yushu.

After finding a couple of other Shiwan potters like Huang Guzhen, and Huang Yun Ji who's works resemble Sumida, perhaps Sumida pottery was more of an influence on late 19th and early 20th century Shiwan pottery.

As a newbie Shiwan collector, I need to learn more about this connection between Sumida and Shiwan.