A CHINESE CELADON-GLAZED FIGURE OF A FOREIGNER

Yuan / Ming Dynasty

元或明 青釉番人像

The man wearing short-sleeved attire and carrying a staff over his left shoulder affixed with a pouch containing his belongings, with cherubic cheeks and wide eyes either side of a pointed nose, his receding hair draped down over his shoulders, covered in an olive-green glaze suffused with a fine craquelure

20.5cm high

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NOTE:

This unusual figure follows in the tradition of creating depictions of 'foreigners', as seen in Tang-era figures that demonstrate the diversity of the population and cosmopolitan nature of the time. See a Tang-era zun, modelled as a kneeling man carrying a large leather sack and decorated with a straw glaze, sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 1 Jun 2016, lot 3103. Later figures that utilise a celadon glaze, these ones instead depicting local people, were found created by the Yaozhou kilns of the Northern Song Dynasty, see Sotheby's Hong Kong, 25 May 2022, lot 341, and another figure in the same rooms November 8 2023, lot 301.