Focus on Vase with Poet Zhou Dunyi and discuss the Use.
The height of the vase is 60.3 cm, with a rim diameter of 32.3cm and base of 20cm. With these large dimensions this vase was highly likely to be commissioned, its large scale would have facilitated the use of the vase for formal or public display as opposed to personal use. The Metropolitan Museum (n.d.) confirmed this through the analysis of the cobalt blue letters in the sunken panel on the bottom of the vase.Additionally the vase carries two lines on each side, marking characters that read "Wanli Ding mo nain zao", and four characters in the middle of the vase "qian fu ying yong" refereeing an auxiliary palace for intended display. A breakage in the porcelain above the image of the four scholars is suggested to be a result of a crumble during the firing process accounting for why the vase never reached the Palace in the South West. Instead the vase was said to be bought by a less-demanding owner before ending up in the Metropolitan Museum in the 1920s.
Metropolitan Museum porcelain The Metropolitan Museum Wanli scholar