Large Glazed Earthenware Floor Jar Carved in Lotus Petal and Imbricated Scale, Ochre Glaze with Applied Silver Leaf, Southeast Asian, c. 1920–1980

The Piece

A big-shouldered ovoid jar that rises to a short neck and then throws out a wide, flat trumpet mouth — the sort of collar that makes a vessel read as architecture rather than as a pot. It has real presence on a floor.

The surface is carved, not painted on. Broad lotus petals sweep up the body, each one modelled in low relief with its outline cut down into the clay, and between and above them run bands of imbricated scale — overlapping fan-shaped lobes laid in courses like roof tiles or fish scales, every one incised and raised.

The colour works against that relief. The petals and the collar carry a deep mottled ochre-to-marigold glaze, thick and slightly curdled where it crystallised in the kiln, shifting in tone across every panel. The scale bands are worked in applied silver leaf over a dark ground, so the cut lines read black and the raised lobes catch light.

The silver has aged the way silver does. It is not uniformly bright: it runs a warm grey-brown, unevenly, darker in the recesses and along the cut lines, with some scales duller than their neighbours. That is oxidation, and it takes a long time.

The base is a plain recessed foot in bare buff earthenware, and it is worth a look. The glaze runs down over the shoulder of the foot and stops in a clean line, beading slightly thicker right at the edge where it was wiped back before firing — because glaze that reaches a kiln shelf welds the pot to it. The bare clay below carries embedded kiln grit and the dark staining of years of standing.

History & Provenance

The ornament comes from a real tradition. The lotus is the central decorative and religious motif across Buddhist Southeast Asia, and a rising band of lotus petals around the foot or shoulder of a vessel — a lotus lappet border — runs through Thai, Khmer, Burmese and Chinese ceramics for centuries. Imbricated scale-work belongs to the same architectural vocabulary, taken from temple roof tiling and carried onto pottery, lacquer, and carved wood.

The making is what dates it, and the foot is the place to start.

The ochre is a fired glaze. It stops in a wiped line above the foot and beads thicker right at that edge, which is what molten glaze does when it is cut back before firing and then flows in the kiln. A brushed-on paint stops where the brush stops and never pools. The glaze also carries a fine curdled, crystallised texture across the petals, and where it has chipped it breaks with a hard glassy edge rather than lifting in a flake. This vessel went into a kiln with its colour on it.

The silver is applied leaf, and it is tarnishing. The scale bands are not uniformly bright — they have gone a warm grey-brown, unevenly, with the darkest tone sitting in the recesses. Silver oxidises; aluminium leaf and the silver-toned acrylics used on modern decorative ware do not, which is precisely why the trade uses them. Tarnish across a whole band is time.

And the foot has lived. The bare clay holds embedded kiln grit and the dull dark staining that comes from decades of standing on floors and shelves, not the clean bisque of recent production.

Glazed earthenware carved in relief and finished with metal leaf is a technique with a long continuous run through Thailand, Burma and Vietnam, moving between temple ware, palace ware, and the export trade. Because it never stopped, and because there is no maker's mark, stamp, or label anywhere on the body or the foot, we are giving a wide honest range — c. 1920–1980 — rather than a narrow one the object cannot support. The tarnish on the leaf and the wear at the foot are what put it well back from the present.

What it is, beyond the date, is properly made. Somebody threw a form this large and kept it true, carved every petal and every one of several hundred scales by hand, glazed and fired it, and then laid the leaf on course by course. That is a great deal of work, and it shows.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A floor vessel this size does a job nothing on a shelf can. It fills the dead corner beside a sofa, flanks a fireplace or a doorway, anchors the turn at the bottom of a staircase, or stands at the end of a hall where the eye needs somewhere to land. Empty, it is a piece of sculpture; with a bundle of tall dried branches, pampas, curly willow or bare stems it becomes six feet of architecture.

The colour is unusually easy to place for something this loud. Marigold ochre and tarnished silver is a warm-and-cool pairing that sits with black metal, walnut, oak, jute, cream plaster, leather and terracotta floor tile without competing, and it lifts a corner that has gone flat.

For a shop or a designer it is a room-anchor at a fraction of what a comparable piece costs new through a trade showroom, and the carving means it holds up at close range as well as across a room.

A note on care, and the silver is the fragile part. Do not polish it. The tarnish on the leaf has taken decades to build and it is a large part of what makes the piece read as it does; silver polish will strip it back to a raw brightness that cannot be put back. Do not fill the jar with water — the foot is bare porous earthenware and will wick moisture, and standing water will get under the leaf. If you want to use it with fresh flowers, stand a separate waterproof liner or a glass vase inside it. Never immerse it and never wet-wipe the silver bands; keep it out of a bathroom or anywhere with standing humidity. Dust it dry, with a soft brush worked into the carved lines and a soft dry cloth over the glazed areas, staying light on the leaf. Use no cleaner, no solvent and nothing abrasive anywhere on it. Keep it out of direct sun.