I bought this pot as a bunch of shards, as a restoration project. I really like putting such a historic piece back together, and do it just. I decided for the ‘museum type’ of restoration, leaving the missing parts as blanks.

I started with these, and first I glued the fitting pieces together. Than I rolled out self-hardening white clay to the right thickness. I molded these in the right shape on the actual piece, and let it set to a leathery state. After that I pressed it gently on the hole, leaving a marking where to trim it. After trimming I let it dry some more and glued it in place. Than some filling of the seems, and some careful sanding and scraping till it was to my liking.

Dating these unpainted pieces is not easy, but the red clay, and the shape of the piece lead me to think it is Gansu type of the Yangshao culture, 4th- 3rd millennium BC. A good match, with painting, is in the British Museum, depicted in William Watson’s Pre-Tang Ceramics of China image 56.

 This is a time of communities that are either agricultural or nomadic. In the late phase it becomes an early bronze culture, contemporary to the Shang dynasty in central China.

Collection nr. 11-2015