Chinese Storage Vessel / Planter

Round, brown and built to hold a season's worth of something.

This storage vessel or planter comes from Guangdong Province, China, and dates to the early 20th century, in glazed pottery. Big jars like this one were the working pantry of southern Chinese households, holding water, rice, salt or pickled vegetables. An amber glaze darkens to deep brown at the shoulder and fades toward the foot, where the clay gives way to a drier surface. The wide rim is left in bare terracotta, with a pale interior below it. Twenty-seven and a half inches high and thirty-five across.

A fig tree would be a kind of retirement.