Vintage Thai Celadon Crackle Glaze Dishes, Set of Four, c. 1970–1995
Viridian Eclection
The Piece Four small Thai celadon dishes in a warm amber glaze, the kind that pools dark in the well and thins to honey where it runs over the rim. The whole surface is crazed in a fine even net, a...
The Piece
Four small Thai celadon dishes in a warm amber glaze, the kind that pools dark in the well and thins to honey where it runs over the rim. The whole surface is crazed in a fine even net, and the crackle has taken up colour over time so that the web reads as a darker tracery across the amber rather than as flaw. Each dish is shallow, slightly everted at the lip, and sits on a small unglazed foot ring burnt buff in the firing.
They are a working set rather than a matched factory one. The glaze breaks differently on each, heavier and browner on two, lighter and more golden on the others, which is what a reduction fired ash type glaze does across a kiln. The undersides carry the maker's mark: Thai Celadon in a running script, with Thai characters above and the impressed numeral 20 beside.
History & Provenance
Celadon in Thailand has two quite separate histories and it is worth keeping them apart. The first is the Sawankhalok and Sukhothai kilns of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, which exported stoneware across Southeast Asia and whose wares are now museum and auction material. The second is the modern revival, which began in the middle of the twentieth century around Chiang Mai, where workshops set out to recover the old glazes and the wood ash chemistry behind them.
These dishes belong to the revival. The workshops of northern Thailand, Mengrai Kilns and the Baan Celadon group among the better known, built a substantial export trade from the 1960s onward in glazed stoneware finished with the deliberate fine crackle that has become the signature of the style. The crackle is not a defect. It is engineered, produced by a glaze that shrinks at a different rate from the body as the piece cools, and it is then allowed to stain with use so the net becomes visible.
The amber rather than the more familiar jade green places these in the brown or honey celadon family the same kilns produced alongside their green wares. The mark gives the ware name rather than a workshop, so no single pottery can be named here with confidence, and the impressed numeral reads as a shape or size code rather than a date.
Product Details
| Era | c. 1970–1995. Dated to the modern Chiang Mai celadon revival rather than to the historic kilns: a controlled fine crackle glaze on a light stoneware body, wheel finished with a clean unglazed foot ring, and marked in roman script for the export trade, all of which belong to the later twentieth century workshop production rather than to Sawankhalok wares. No dated mark is present |
| Set | Four dishes |
| Material | Glazed stoneware, amber or honey celadon with an allover fine crackle |
| Marks | Impressed and painted to the underside: Thai Celadon in script with Thai characters above and the numeral 20 |
| Dimensions | Approximately 4.5 in. diameter each |
| Condition | Very good throughout. No chips, cracks or restoration found on any of the four. Glaze bright and unworn. Crackle stained to a warm brown across all pieces, which is inherent to the ware and not damage. Foot rings clean. Colour varies slightly piece to piece as the glaze intends |
Why It Belongs in Your Home
Small dishes earn their keep by being everywhere: under a candle, beside the stove for salt, on a desk for paperclips, at each place for olives. In amber they do something a white dish cannot, which is to sit warm against wood and brass rather than cutting against them. Four is the useful number, enough to set a table or to scatter through a room, and because the crackle already carries its colour there is nothing here to protect. Use them.
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