Tang Vase in Chinese Blue, 12.5"

Name: Tang Vase in Chinese Blue, 12.5"
Brand: Ben Owen
Price: 635.00 USD
Availability: InStock

$635.00

A glaze that was lost for 60 years

The two handles are what hold it together. They stand up in tight loops from the shoulder to just below the rim, and they carry dark maroon on both sides of the pot — so whichever face you turn out, the handles stay dark.

The glaze is copper, fired to 2,250 degrees, where it reacts to the smoke and flame in the kiln. Chinese Blue was first developed at Jugtown Pottery in the 1930s. After Jacques Busbee died, his wife Juliana asked that it no longer be made, and the recipe was lost. It stayed with Ben Owen Sr., who spent years trying to get back to it and arrived at a recipe of his own. That version passed down through the family, and Ben Owen III still works in his.

At 12.5 inches high, this is a piece with real presence — a console, an entry table, the end of a sideboard. It also asks you to make a decision most vases never do: which side faces the room. Live with it a while and you will probably turn it.

No two pieces develop the same way. The photographs on this page are the vase that will arrive. Hand-signed by Ben Owen III, [2026]. 12.5"h.

Why We Love Ben Owen III's Vases

Turn it and it's a different vase

Many of these pieces divide horizontally — red on top, blue below. This one splits the other way. Deep oxblood covers one face and wraps the shoulder; turquoise climbs the other side and takes the foot. Set it with the red forward and it is a dark, serious object. Turn it a quarter and it is a blue one. Two vases, depending on how it faces the room.

No Other Vase Like It

Because the glaze responds to smoke and flame, the color falls differently on every piece that leaves the kiln. The pooling at the base, the drift of red across one shoulder, the band where it thinned — those belong to this vase. The photograph on this page is the piece that will arrive. There is no second one that matches it.

A Tang amphora, thrown in Seagrove

The twin loop handles and the high shoulder closing to a short collar come from Tang dynasty amphorae, made in China more than a thousand years ago. The Jugtown potters studied early Chinese forms, and the shape entered the Owen family's catalog from there. Ben Owen III throws it now in Seagrove, North Carolina, in the glaze his grandfather developed.

Specifications

7.5"w x 12.5"h.

Tang Vase in Chinese Blue, 12.5"

$635.00

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Craftsman Profile

Ben Owen

Ben Owen III is the third Ben Owen at the wheel in Seagrove, North Carolina. He started throwing at eight and was apprenticed to his grandfather and father by thirteen. A BFA in ceramics followed, then a season studying wood-firing in Tokoname, Japan. His work is held by the Smithsonian and the Mint Museum of Craft and Design.

He works in the family's recovered Chinese Blue — a copper glaze his grandfather developed at Jugtown Pottery in the 1930s, lost when production stopped in 1947, and rebuilt years later from memory. Ben still mixes that recipe. Most of his pots pass through the Pappagama, the four-chambered wood kiln he built and named for the year he became a father. A firing takes four days, and no two pieces come out alike.

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Do understand though that as most of our products are handmade and not mass produced, there will be some variation in finish, color, or size. But if any product arrives damaged, we will happily replace it. Please send back your return within 14 days of receiving it.

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Tang Vase in Chinese Blue, 12.5"

A glaze that was lost for 60 years

Why We Love Ben Owen III's Vases