A GLAZED AND IRON DECORATED PORCELAIN 'TIGER' GLOBULAR JARKorea, 20th centuryA tiger seems to crouch among bamboo stalks, under a sky crossed by clouds, in a design that - despite the real presence of the feline - takes on the characteristics of a a vigorous abstraction.34 cm highProvenance: Ambassador Francesco Rausi.The model for this decoration is a jar in the Museum of Oriental Ceramics in Osaka, Ataka Collection, dated to the 17th century and probably made in kilns in the north of the Korean peninsula (The Radiance of Jade and the Clarity of Water. Korean Ceramics from the Ataka Collection, exhibition catalogue, Chicago 1991, p. 123, n. 87). It is an example of a production that - following the economic crisis caused by the Japanese invasion of the late sixteenth century and the negative effects of the disorders following the fall of the Ming dynasty and the contemporary establishment of the Manchu dynasty of the Qing in China - preferred other materials naturally available on Korean territory, such as iron, to the expensive imported cobalt blue.