This is an ancient Chinese y Buddhist Lotus Jar with an applied writhing dragon on its base and a foo dog Lion as a finial. It dates to the 13th century, Yuan dynasty.

This rare and interesting pottery jar had been excavated from a Buddhist site in Yunnan province back in the 1990s.

This jar is quite heavily-potted and the pottery is particularly brown colored with a few traces of white pigment on both the jar and cover. The wall is decorated with applied strips of clay to form a spectacular dragon. The cover is also particularly elaborate with a Lion guardian effigy.

Dimensions: Height 25.5 cm (10 inches). The jar itself has no restoration or repair but minor chips. A nice example of Yunnan Buddhist pottery in very good condition.

This jar is from our own collection of Buddhist vessels from Yunnan that we had collected ten-twenty years ago and not previously offered for sale.

Provenance: our own private collection acquired 15 years ago.

History: Yunnan lies at the crossroads of many significant South East Asian cultures being bordered by Tibet, India, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, and Vietnam. No wonder than that this important discovery and hoard had piqued the interest of International Buddhist and art communities around the globe.
These precious vessels in the form of stupas (a receptacle of offerings) were found to have once contained Buddhist “offerings”…remnants of burnt rice, cowrie shells (early Chinese money), fabric, and metal objects.

Carbon dating of the organic matter left inside some of the pots, tell us that they date from the late Tang Dynasty (618-907 BP) to late Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 BP).
Also referred to as “FengShui” jars by some Chinese officials, each pottery jar is unique decorated with Buddhist design elements like lotus petals, zodiac symbols, celestial beings, and curvilinear patterns similar to cloud designs. Formed by hand, techniques such as carving, incising, applique and painting were all utiized methods for their manufacture almost one thousand years ago. Some are incised with Chinese and a Sanskirt (Devanagari) form of script. Offering vessels were created in an array of sizes, 8″-10″ height being the most common size but occasionally some extraordinary larger sizes were created as well upwards to 36″.