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- 12" Chinese Tang Sancai Porcelain Pottery Guan -Yin Head Bust, Ca. 1956 - a Femini Altar Find - The Voodoo Estate
12" Chinese Tang Sancai Porcelain Pottery Guan -Yin Head Bust, Ca. 1956 - a Femini Altar Find - The Voodoo Estate
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Product Description
~ Voodoo Priestess Estate ~ ©
12" Chinese Tang Sancai Porcelain Pottery Guan -Yin Head Bust, Circa 1956
A Minor Femini Altar Find
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This is another of our very long listings with an abundant text and 10 photographs, so please be patient and read the write-up through.
If you have come this far, we feel you will find it was worth the wait.
Nearly twenty-three and a half years have now passed since we were called to do the estate that had been closed up for seventeen years!
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Chinese Tang Sancai Porcelain Pottery Guan -Yin Head BustThis is one of an unmatched pair found displayed as the inner door guardians to the shrine. Both were purchased from an unnamed New York antique dealer located within walking distance to Central Park in 1956 being our only clues to her source of theses heads.
It is our opinion, that they were already antiques at that time.
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Chinese Tang Sancai Porcelain Pottery
This Guanyin depiction is done in Chinese Tang Sancai Porcelain Pottery as the title implies.
Sancai
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, for the most part...
Sancai is a versatile type of decoration on Chinese pottery and other painted pieces using glazes or slip, predominantly in the three colours of brown (or amber), green, and a creamy off-white. It is particularly associated with the Tang dynasty (618–907) and its tomb figures, appearing around 700. Therefore, it is commonly referred to as Chinese Tang Sancai in Chinese. Tang sancai wares were sometimes referred in China and the West as egg-and-spinach by dealers, for their use of green, yellow, and white, especially when combined with a streaked effect.
The Tang dynasty three-color glazed pottery is the treasure of ancient Chinese ceramic firing techniques. It is a kind of low-temperature glazed pottery popular in the Tang dynasty. The glaze has yellow, green, white, brown, blue, black and other colours. The yellow, green, and white colour-based are most predominant, so people call it "Tang Sancai." Because the Tang Sancai is unearthed in Luoyang earliest and is found the most in Luoyang, it is also called "Luoyang Tang Sancai."
It uses lead-glazed earthenware, and although two firings were needed, it was easier and therefore cheaper to make than Chinese porcelain or celadon, and suitable for making large figures, if necessary made up of several molded sections assembled after a first firing. Vessels, mostly rather small and made for burial, were made in the technique as well as figures. Small plates with three feet, typically about 18–40 cm (7–16 inches) across, called "offering-trays", are a distinctive type, with more carefully controlled decoration than other types of pieces.
The white may come from the natural colour of the fired clay, sometimes coated with a transparent glaze, or there may be a white slip. The brown and green colours came from adding metal oxides to a lead glaze, and in fact blues and blacks are also found. The blue came from adding imported cobalt, and was therefore more expensive and used sparingly, often on smaller pieces.
Technique
The body of sancai ceramics was made of white clay, coated with coloured glaze, and fired at a temperature of 800 degrees Celsius. Sancai is a type of lead-glazed earthenware: lead oxide was the principal flux in the glaze, often mixed with quartz in the proportion of 3:1. The polychrome effect was obtained by using as colouring agents copper (which turns green), iron (which turns brownish yellow), and less often manganese and cobalt (which turns blue).
At kiln sites located at Tongchuan, Neiqui county in Hebei and Gongxian in Henan, the clays used for burial wares were similar to those used by Tang potters. The burial wares were fired at a lower temperature than contemporaneous whitewares. Large figures made for grave goods in burials ("burial wares), such as the well-known Tang dynasty tomb figures with people, camels and horses, were cast in sections, in moulds with the parts luted together using clay slip. In some cases, a degree of individuality was imparted to the assembled figurines by hand-carving.
When used together, the glazes ran into each other at the edges, giving much of the character of the decoration. Apart from the precisely painted offering-trays, which mostly have moulded contours for the areas in different colours, in most pieces the colours are applied loosely, even carelessly. Splashing and spotting are often used, and on both vessels and figures the colours often do not attempt to follow relief areas or different parts of the bodies. Decorative motifs, in painting or relief, are borrowed from textiles, jewelery and metalwork.
Development
Sancai wares were made in North China using white and buff-firing secondary kaolins and fire clays. Sancai follows the development of green-glazed pottery dating back to the Han period (25–220 AD); the brown glaze was also known to the Han, but they only very rarely mixed the two in a single piece. After the Han the use of these glazes almost disappears for some four hundred years, which has rather puzzled experts. The great majority of survivals are from burial goods, which in the intervening period are painted with pigments that are not fired (and so have now mostly fallen off the piece). But a trickle of pieces shows a "tenuous lead-glazing tradition linking Han to Sui and T'ang".
Predecessors to the sancai style can also be seen in some Northern Qi (550–577) ceramic works. Northern Qi tombs have revealed some beautiful artifacts, such as porcellaneous ware with splashed green designs, previously thought to have been developed under the Tang dynasty.
The full polychrome sancai combination appears shortly before the end of the 7th century. After only about 70 years, the production of tomb figures seems to have ceased almost completely with the very disruptive An Lushan Rebellion of 755, followed by a Tibetan invasion of the north in 763, but the vessels continued for another fifty years or more.
After another long gap, sancai was again produced from the late Tang and in the Liao dynasty (907–1125, a breakaway foreign dynasty in the far north). It was often used for large items made for temples. Sets of sancai luohan figures up to life-size were often displayed in special luohan halls in temples. Few of these that remained in place survived the Cultural Revolution. The Yixian glazed pottery luohans are a Liao dynasty set that is now distributed between various Western museums, and so very well known. Unusually, these were constructed around internal supporting iron bars. Pairs of large guardian figures flanking shrines were also made.
Vessels
The tomb figures are covered by their own article. The other type of sancai pieces was vessels in a number of shapes, but none very large, all found almost exclusively in burials, and perhaps only ever made for them. The shapes are mostly characterized by "contrasting contours and almost extravagant roundness, expanding to the point almost of bursting". Many adapt non-Chinese shapes, mostly from metalwork, although some can be traced back to ancient Greek pottery, and may be described by the Greek terms amphora (two-handled vase) and oinochoe (jug or ewer with spout and a handle), the last usually having a spout in the form of the head of a bird or fenghuang (Chinese phoenix). These derive from "Hellenistic survivals in the oasis states and the cities of western Central Asia". The handles of amphorae often rejoin the body in a dragon's head biting the rim. Other shapes are traditionally Chinese, such as the lidded jar It is possible, as has also been suggested for much ancient Greek pottery, that the ceramic vessels were cheaper copies for burial of the vessels in metal, probably silver, that the deceased used or aspired to in life, just as the tomb figures replicated servants and animals.
Many pieces have relief decoration, either applied by sprigging, or in the moulds used to make many pieces, though simple shapes were still made on the potter's wheel.
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In other entries she notes, "If worshipped in this manner Guan Yin will come to your aid in order to save your life."
"A Femini Avatar of Parvati," She also gives this attribute to the Virgin Mary.
In a lengthy entry concerning Guan Yin, she writes; "Hers is an ancient and complex presence of energy of many incarnations. She is Bodhisattva energy, not human and of many bodies formed of the energy of compassion. With all reverence I channel this energy to manifest as part of my reality to share with you. This is to offer this energy so you may know the truth. This is the Goddess energy of a mothers love and compassion. She responds to needs of the true heart in anguish as she is connected to those in need, the sick, those in fear, those who are lost and those in dire circumstance. She is our protector and the benefactor of infants and children. Reverence to her has bestowed children to those with a vacant womb as she is the Goddess who hears the anguished prayers of us with need to conceive. A single session with her has produced fertility. She is compassionate in death, caring for the souls she has placed at birth and acting as their guide after death. Her presence is easily invoked to see to needs of the fresh dead through their judgements just as she protects the newborn."
Real or imagined, we certainly understand why she and her associates were as feared and respected as they were.
Guan Yin Goddess of Mercy
She is one of the most frequent seen Deities on altars in the temples of China. Guan Yin (also spelled Quan Yin, Kwan Yin, Kuanyin; in pinyin, and Guanyin). In Sanskrit, her name is Padma-pâni, or "Born of the Lotus." Quan Yin is loved rather than feared and is the model of beauty and the goddess of mercy.
She was originally male until the early part of the 12th. century and has evolved from Avlokiteshvara, "the merciful lord of utter enlightenment," an Indian bodhisattva who chose to remain on earth in order to bring relief to the suffering rather than enjoy the ecstasies of Nirvana.
One Quan Yin story tells of her being a Buddhist who through love and sacrifice during life, had earned the right to enter Nirvana after death. Like Avlokiteshvara, while standing before the gates of Paradise she heard a cry of anguish from the earth below. Turning back to earth, she renounced her reward of eternal bliss but was granted immortality in the hearts of the suffering.
In China she has many names and is also known as "great mercy, great pity, salvation from misery, salvation from woe, self-existent, thousand arms and thousand eyes." She is also referred to as the Goddess of the Southern Sea or Indian Archipelago and has been compared to the Virgin Mary.
She is one of the San Ta Shih, or the Three Great Beings, renowned for their power over the animal kingdom and forces of nature. These three Bodhisattva's or P'u Sa as they are know in China, are namely Manjusri or Wên Shu, Samantabhadra or P'u Hsien, and Avlokiteshvara or Quan Yin. Quan Yin is the shortened form of a name that means One Who Sees and Hears the Cry from the Human World. Her Chinese title signifies, "She who always observes or pays attention to sounds," i.e., she who hears prayers.
At times possessing eleven heads, she is surnamed Sung-Tzu-Niang-Niang, "lady who brings children." She is goddess of fecundity as well as of mercy.
Worshipped especially by women, this goddess comforts the troubled, the sick, the lost, the senile and the unfortunate. Her popularity has grown such through the centuries that she is now also regarded as the protector of seafarers, farmers and travelers. She cares for souls in the underworld, and is invoked during post-burial rituals to free the soul of the deceased from the torments of purgatory.
There are temples all over the world dedicated to her and she is worshipped by women in South China more than in the North, on the 19th. day of the 2nd., 6th. & 9th. moons.
It is a common birth custom in Foochow China that when a family has a daughter married since the 15th. day of the previous year, who has not yet given birth to a male infant, several presents are sent to her by her relatives on a lucky day between the 5th. and 14th. of the first month. Some of the articles sent are a paper lantern bearing a picture of the Goddess of Mercy, Quan Yin, with a child in her arms, and the inscription, "May Quan Yin present you with a son".
Oysters in an earthenware vessel, rice-cakes, oranges and garlic are also offered by worshippers who ask for sons, wealth, and protection.
She can bring children which are generally sons, but if the mother asks for a daughter she will be beautiful and protected from sorrow.
We see her "crossing the waves" in many poses as a guide to seamen and fishermen. She is said to be known to "render harmless the spears of an enemy in battle."
Her principal temple on the island of Putuoshan, in the Chusan Archipelago off the Zhejiang coast near Ningbo, is a major pilgrimage site sacred to Buddhists. The worship of Quan Yin being the most prominent feature due to the fact that she is said to have resided there for nine years, reigning as the Queen of the Southern Seas. The full name of the island is P'u t'o lo ka, from Mount Pataloka, where the Goddess, in her transformation from Avalokiteshvara, looks down upon mankind.
Miao Feng Shan, Mount of the Wondrous Peak, attracts pilgrims who add the use of rattles and fireworks to their prayers to invoke her. In 847, the first temple of Quan Yin was built on this island. By 1702, P'u Tuo had four hundred temples and three thousand monks and was the destination of countless pilgrims. By 1949 however, P'u Tuo was home to only 140 monasteries and temples.
No other figure in the Chinese pantheon appears in a greater variety of images, of which there are said to be thousands of different incarnations or manifestations. She is usually depicted as a barefoot, gracious woman dressed in beautiful, white flowing robes, with a white hood gracefully draped over the top of the head and carrying a small upturned vase of holy dew.
In her Lamaistic form, as seen in a common bronze from eighteenth century China and Tibet, she is often entirely naked. She is a figure of infinite grace, her gently composed features conveying the sublime selflessness and compassion that have made her the favorite of all deities.
She may be depicted seated on an elephant, standing on a fish, nursing a baby, holding a basket, having six arms or a thousand, and one head or eight, one atop the next, and four, eighteen, or forty hands, with which she strives to alleviate the sufferings of the unhappy.
She is frequently depicted riding a mythological animal known as the Hou, which resembles a Buddhist lion, and symbolizes the divine supremacy exercised by Quan Yin over the forces of nature.
Her bare feet are the consistent quality. On public altars, Quan Yin is frequently flanked by two acolytes, to her right a barefoot, shirtless youth with his hands clasped in prayer known as Shan-ts'ai, the Golden Youth, while on her left is a maid demurely holding her hands together inside her sleeves known as Lung-nü or Jade Maiden.
Her principal feast occurs yearly on the nineteenth day of the second lunar month. She has three birthdays, the nineteenth of the second, sixth and ninth months. There are many metamorphoses of this goddess. She is the model of Chinese beauty, and to say a lady or a little girl is a Kwan Yin is the highest compliment that can be paid to grace and loveliness.
According to ancient legend her name was Miao Shan and she was the daughter of an Indian Prince. She chose to follow a path of self sacrifice and virtue, becoming a pious follower of Buddha.
Although she attained the right to Buddhahood she chose to remain on earth to help mankind. In order to convert her blind father, she visited him as transfigured stranger who informed him that were he to swallow an eyeball of one of his children, his sight would be restored. His children would not consent to the necessary sacrifice, whereupon the future goddess created an eye which her parent swallowed and he regained his sight. She then persuaded her father to join the Buddhist priesthood by pointing out the folly & vanity of a world in which children would not even sacrifice an eye for the sake of a parent.
Another Miao Shan legend was that the son of the dragon king had taken the form of a carp that was caught by a fisherman who displayed it for sale in the market place. Miao Shan sent her servant to buy the fish and released it.
As related in another legend Quan Yin is said to be the daughter of a sovereign of the Chou dynasty who opposed her wish to be a nun. He was infuriated by her refusal to marry which prompted him to assign her humiliating tasks in the convent. This coercion failed & her father then ordered her to be executed for disobedience to his wishes. The executioner being taken by her caused his executioner's sword to strike a rock instead of her neck, breaking the sword.
Her father thereupon ordered her to be suffocated. She then went to Hell, but on her arrival the flames were quenched & flowers burst into bloom. Yama, the presiding officer of the Gates of Hell, looked on in dismay at what seemed to be the summary abolition of his post, and in order to keep his position he sent her back to life again.
Carried in the fragrant heart of a lotus flower she went to the island of Putuo, near Ningbo. One day her father fell ill and according to a Chinese custom, she cut the flesh from her arms that it might be made into medicine. A cure was effected, and in his gratitude her father ordered her statue to be made "with completely-formed arms and eyes." Owing to a misunderstanding of the orders the sculptor carved the statue with many heads and many arms, and so it remains to this day.
She is generally placed on a special altar and facing north. She is the Maternal Goddess, the Protectress of Children, the Observer of all Sounds and a favorite figure in domestic shrines. Her image is carved on small jades which Chinese women offer faithfully at the temples dedicated to her.
She also is the single most important figure crafted in blanc de Chine ware, with approximately nine out of every ten figures from Dehua representing that divinity in one or other of her manifestations. These Quan Yins were often described to European purchasers as "White Santa Marias," to make them desirable to the Christian market.
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It is otherwise in excellent overall condition with no unannounced damage or repair.
It is certainly an unusual vintage Chinese Buddhist artifact with an extraordinary provenance that is much nicer than the photographs are able to depict.
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Rest assured your order will be carefully packed to withstand the onslaught of the most deranged of parcel carriers.
International Buyer's, Please email us for a Shipping Quote.
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©Text and Photos Copyright 2001-2025 bushidobuce, all rights reserved.
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Props are not part of the deal, but you knew that already.
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