Featured Badly damaged but interesting Oriental Square bottle

My guess at the moment is Korean 18th century but I could be wildly out.

9.5" tall

 

Sorry, no real info to add but that piece would be a good candidate for Kintsugi. (Kintsukuroi)

 

I would be willing to bet money that someone who digs bottles from old dumps and privys has found that and pieced it together. Neat piece!

 

Hi,
I would be itching to get my hands on that piece. The Kintsugi would look wonderful on this piece.
greg

 

Wow... are you keeping it? It is wonderful...

 

No, it isnt a keeper, but we need to know what it is first. We love buying things that need to be identified, most we can manage on our own but some are just too far out of our comfort zone!

 

musta bin a labor of love to find nearly all the pieces....and reassemble them...

 

It certainly wasn't remumerative. It does look like it was "dug" for certain.

 

It is actually common with the "diggers" in the bottle world. They do it with the really rare or unknown bottles. There are lots of examples of glass bottles pieced back together floating around the bottle collecting sites that get people dreaming of finding the first known whole one.

 

This is an example of a one of a kind that would bring big money if someone has a whole one. The company was in business less then a year.

 

Very nice piece, I first thought Korea too, but then I thought you might have something special here, called "Tangen Satsuma". Compare a very similar bottle on the page in the link: www.alaintruong.com/archives/2014/03/03/29348504.html

 

How very interesting!!! Thank you so much!!!

Coincidence that this bottle was found in the same auction lot as the c1650 stoneware barrel?

Now I need to work out how to get verification one way or another

 

Do you mind if I link to this thread in another place to double-check?

 

Please do, that's kind of you

 

I've been watching this thread and will be interested to hear any updates. I know there are some on the board with far more knowledge than I. I have a smattering of Chinese porcelain pieces but no understanding of Korean.

I dip my toe in to the world of Chinese ceramics from time to time but usually I learn a tiny bit and end up with a big headache. I do have a subscription to the gotheborg discussion board but a majority of the items discussed are Chinese or Japanese. I get drawn in every time I search for things there and end up way off track.

The thing that puzzles me most about this bottle is the material. It appears to be glazed refined earthenware such as you might find on 19th C Staffordshire wares. Most of the Chinese, Japanese and Korean pieces I see are either stoneware or porcelain and the bases are completely different. I'm wondering if it's Japanese.(again I have nothing to base that on)

I've read that the square shaped bottles were produced for export in response to the popularity of square Dutch gin bottles but I have no idea if that's so. The blue on your bottle looks to my eye rather like the sapphire blue of Kangxi porcelain but again the porcelain issue. Soft paste porcelain will craze but it just doesn't look like that to me either. But I'm certainly no expert, just an struggling pothead, so am really interested in any info.

 

SIS, this one is way out of my knowledge zone (which isnt saying much!)

I too will welcome any more information

 

A very knowledgeable person in the field of Japanese ceramics confirmed that your bottle is Japanese. It could be Awata ware or Satsuma. I was pointed towards another similar Satsuma example in the Metropolitan Museum: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/62686 . You could also try to send pictures to a museum, for example to the Victoria and Albert Museum to ask for their opinion...

 

Mat, I'm very grateful for your help, thank you

 

Very interesting Mat. Did they give an estimate of age on this one?

One gripe I have about so many museum photos is that they don't often show bases.

As an aside, I was bumping about the Met Museum site yesterday after finding a photo in an old (old) reference book that indicated a similar Chinese plate in their collection very much like one I have. I didn't find mine so don't know if it's still in their collection or not. Then again I didn't think to look for this bottle there so shame on me.