A SUPERB LARGE OCHRE, STRAW AND BLACK-GLAZED CAPARISONED FEREGHANA HORSE
Tang dynasty
The elegantly modelled and beautifully-proportioned lean-statured horse, clearly built for speed and endurance, and unusually glazed in a rare combination of straw and black glaze highlights on the ochre-glazed body, the saddle left in the pale pink biscuit and the back draped with a two-layered saddle cloth, the outer cloth decorated with groups of light spots with dribbling black highlights, the under-cloth with stripes suggestive of tiger-markings, the strapwork of the rear haunches with apricot-leaf-shaped bronze trappings displaying pale spots on a black glaze, the tasseled trappings to the straps at the chest of the horse similarly spotted, the horse stands almost four-square on a shaped rectangular base dribbled with glaze from above in the firing process, the harnessed head raised slightly and turned to the left with ears pricked, the neatly roached mane is vertically combed up the neck to the parted forelock.
23 1/4in (59cm) high
Footnotes:
唐 三彩陶馬

Provenance:
From a Private New York Collection, since October 1993

來源
紐約私人藏品，1993年10月入藏

For another Tang horse of similar proportions in the Musee Guimet, Paris, with blue glaze replacing the black of our example, and also displaying a spotted saddle cloth and biscuit saddle and with tassels attached to the strapwork, see commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SancaiHorseTang7-8thCentury.JPG

For a larger horse with a sancai glaze but similarly modelled with tassels at the chest strapwork and 'bronze' apricot-leaf medallions on the hind quarters and harnessed head, and with spotted decoration to the saddle, see Christie's, New York, 13 September 2019, lot 840.

The elegant modeling of this lean-statured horse captures the spirit of this celebrated animal, clearly built for speed and endurance. Immortalized in Chinese literature and the visual arts, the Ferghana horses were introduced into central China from the West during the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220).

For two other horses featuring similar elaborate trappings of tassels on the chest and foliate medallions on the haunches, but using different glazes, see a smaller horse illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, Chinese Art from The Collection of James W. and Marilynn Alsdorf, The Arts Club of Chicago, 21 September – 13 November 1970, c21, just 22 ½ in (57cm) high; and Y. Mino and J. Robinson, Beauty and Tranquility: The Eli Lilly Collection of Chinese Art, Indianapolis, 1983, pp. 174-75, pl. 61, for similarly-sized example, 26in (66cm) high.

The foliate plaques hung from the strapwork on the haunches of our horse, are of a type that has been labeled 'hazel-leaf' or 'apricot-leaf'. For examples of similar gilt-bronze ornaments from the tomb of Princess Yongtai, who was interred in 706 CE, see Mino and Robinson, ibid., p. 174, pl. 61, fig. E.

The result of Daybreak Nuclear and Medical Systems, Inc. thermoluminescence test result no. 538A1.2 is consistent with the suggested date of manufacture.