A FINE BLUE AND WHITE PEAR-SHAPED BOTTLE, YUHUCHUNPING, China, Yuan dynasty, the spreading body is raised on a flared foot and is painted around the sides with two phoenixes in flight amidst peony scroll between narrow decorative borders and bands of scroll-filled petal lappets above and below - Property from an important European private collection - Yuhuchun vases, with its elegantly-shaped pear-form body, have been cherished in China since Five Dynasties (907-960). As William Watson noted in Tang and Liao Ceramics, London, 1984, pl. 63, this form is 'one of the purest expressions of the feeling for delicately carving, unarticulated profiles.' Some scholars have suggested that one of the uses for pear-shaped vases was as a decanter for wine (see Ho Chuimei, 'Social Life under the Mongols as seen in Ceramics', Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, Vol. 59, 1994-95, pp. 41-42), and Yuan dynasty paintings, book illustrations as well as burials and tomb murals further prove this may have been the case. A blue and white yuhuchun vase (28.5 cm. high) with grapes on a scrolling vine as the central motif in the British Museum, is illustrated in Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, p.72. A further example (25.1 cm. high) with a sinuous three-clawed dragon chasing a flaming pearl amidst clouds as the central motif was sold at Sotheby's New York, October 17 2001, lot 133 - Good condition