19th Century Chinese Blue and White Ginger Jar with Painted River Landscape

This is the ginger jar people picture when they hear the words. Round shouldered, blue and white, and painted quickly by someone who had done it a thousand times before. The decoration runs all the way round the body and shows a river landscape with a pavilion, willows, distant hills and a moored boat, all rendered in loose washes of cobalt that blur softly into the grey white glaze. Above it sits a band of dots around the shoulder, and the rim and foot are left unglazed to a warm brown.

Jars like this were made in provincial kilns in southern China through the 19th century, filled with preserved ginger or other goods and shipped west in huge numbers. They arrived in Britain as packaging and stayed as ornaments. The painting was never meant to be precise, and that is the charm. Stand back and the scene resolves into a whole landscape. Come close and it dissolves into brushstrokes, which is exactly how the best of these look.

It measures 16 cm across the body and stands 15 cm tall. That is a good middle size, big enough to read from across a room but not so large that it needs a plinth. We have had a stem of dried eucalyptus in it for the photographs and it looks right, but it also looks right empty on a mantelpiece, on a stack of books, or as one of a group of blue and white pieces on a dresser where the softness of the painting stops the whole thing looking too formal.

Condition is very good for its age, some surface wear to the glaze  where it has rubbed against a shelf for 150 years, all of it entirely as expected. No cracks, no restoration and the glaze is still bright.

If you are after one properly old blue and white jar rather than a reproduction, this is a very good one to have.