My Ginger Jar Obsession
Today I’d like to talk about a favorite among collectors everywhere, the Chinese ginger jar. Recently I traveled to Round Top, Texas to the Antique Fair where I brought back two beautiful antique blue and white ginger jars. When I got home I began to wonder how I could find out for sure if these jars are truly antique. They don’t have a date marked on them, there isn’t a brand, it’s just blue and white porcelain and some guy's word. So I started researching and I found so many interesting facts about ginger jars that I just had to share them with all of you!
First of all, what is a ginger jar? Ginger jars are rounded porcelain vessels that were once used to store herbs in China. I’ve read different origin dates on these – from 221 BCE (Qin (Chin) Dynasty) to Ming Period (1368-1604). Either way, they have been being made for a really long time. Ginger jars were first used to transport spices such as ginger, salt, etc. When ginger became an export to the West, they became known as “ginger jars.” So originally intended as utilitarian, as soon as the West saw them, they were quickly adored for their colors and their porcelain quality and by the 19th century they were collected solely for their decorative appeal.
Obviously, ginger jars are made in China and their production actually grew out of specific region of China, Jingdezhan, that became known for their porcelain manufacturing. Many of today’s porcelain still comes from Jingdezhen, and actually most of my china that I source from vendors comes from there and another day I’ll tell you guys about the time I ordered 300 pounds of porcelain from Jingdezhen that literally traveled on a slow boat from China for six weeks and showed up on my front porch. But even though much of these pieces have been historically and still today made in large scale production, they are still hand made and hand painted and produced by master potters and skilled artist and still very high quality. Really their production is such a testament to China’s ancient history, culture and traditions of porcelain making. Something interesting I read, it is thought that the English word “china” comes from the western attempt at pronouncing Jingdezhan’s orginal name Changnan.
So when you are shopping for ginger jars there are a couple of things to keep in mind regarding their value. First, age (more on how you can tell that in a bit), colors, rarity of the piece, condition, and funny enough, if the piece still has a lid (an antique piece with a lid definitely is increased in value), the quality of the porcelain/painting (is it crude art with large brush strokes or very detailed/defined?)
Reign marks – These were usually applied to tell you which dynasty and emperor the jar was made under. This can be misleading because sometime the potters would actually copy styles of previous reigns and use their marks for styles to give homage to past craftsmen. This was not to mislead buyers but definitely complicated the matter. These unfortunately can also be faked (you have to remember these marks should be just as detailed as the art on a piece, these pieces were for royalty). There is an excellent article on christies.com regarding Chinese marks and they reference Gerald Davidson’s The Handbook of Marks on Chinese Ceramics. Just so you know though, this book goes for over a thousand dollars on amazon (I mean, think of all the blue and white you could buy for that).
So getting back to how old the two ginger jars are that I picked up from Round Top. From my research I have learned that older ginger jars are usually heavier than more modern pieces. No one is sure why they are made so heavy but it has been speculated that perhaps they were made to balance a ship’s ballast. I also learned to look at the wear to a piece’s foot and to the bottom of it’s lid. If it’s a newer piece its common to see brush strokes of the brown stain they sometimes apply for an antique look. Also a foot should have some good wear marks to it (and not all in the same direction). Both my jars show these signs of age and do not appear to be reproductions in addition to having some beautiful detailed art so I do think these are older pieces.
I would like to close with a beautiful example of Chinese porcelain and ancient culture, the Three Friends of Winter, a pattern that is commonly portrayed on ginger jars. The three friends are pine, bamboo, and plum. They are grouped together in the context of winter because they all flourish during this season. They symbolize the ideal characteristics of the scholar-gentleman steadfastness, perserverance, and resilience, basically thriving under adversity much like you would find these trees in winter. This term was found as early as 1241 in literary writings and are a common subject in paintings, calligraphy and is still found on today’s modern porcelains.