This represents the hare in the moon, the globular waterpot having a hare at one side. The glaze is of a deep olive colour with a kiln imperfection at one side, and is not typical of Longquan of this date.

Major Duberly wrote: ‘The hare, a symbol of longevity, offered himself as food for Buddha, and was rewarded by transmigration to the moon, where by Daoist myth he compounds the Elixir of Immortality’.

Literature: Anthony du Boulay, The Duberly Collection of Chinese Art at Winchester College (Winchester, 2019), p. 15

Provenance: Bequeathed as part of the Duberly Collection, 1978; purchased by Major Montagu and Lady Eileen Duberly from Sydney Moss, 14 December 1954 (£16); formerly in the Montague Meyer Collection, sold Sotheby’s, London, 10 July 1951, lot 25; the Joshua Collection, sold Sotheby’s, London, July 1945, lot 28; the Seligman Collection, and the Kenneth Dingwall Collection (acquired by 1933)

Location: Treasury, Gallery 2