1. (Louise Cort, 20  July 2001) According to Victor Hauge, this jar was acquired in Thailand as  "Haripunchai" ware, along with the painted jar S2005.420. This term  used to indicate the ceramics made at the old center of Haripunchai, near  modern Lamphun, south of Chiang Mai, which was conquered in 1292. See Shaw  1987, 89–91. Shaw substituted the name Lamphun for the anachronistic term  "Haripunchai." If the vendor identified this piece as  "Haripunchai," however, it may simply indicate that it had come to  the vendor from Chiang Mai or vicinity.

Shaw, John C. 1987. Introducing Thai Ceramics; also  Burmese and Khmer. Chiang Mai: Duangphorn Kemasingki.  

2. (Louise Cort, 10  July 2002).  According to Mr. Sisavath, vice-director, Luang Prabang   Museum, there are more  than ten bottles of this type in the museum. Many people still have this type  of bottle in their homes in Luang Prabang. 

According to Mrs. Tran Thi Thanh  Dao, Museum of Vietnamese   History, Ho Chi Minh    City, the museum has one bottle of this type, from a  French collection given to the museum in 1956, without detailed records.

3. (Candy Chan,  Research Assistant, May 14, 2003) Black water bottles of this type made in Maing Kaing are displayed in the  Shan States Museum in Southern Shan States, Burma, together with some red  versions of the same shape painted with red slip. These bottles are also  exhibited in the Pao Museum,  an ethnographic museum in Taungyi. They were produced  in Panglong, in between Taungyi  and Maing Kaing, and Loi Put, southeast of Taungyi  (Tsuda 2001, 44–51).

Tsuda saw black water bottles of this type sold in shops at  the central market in Kyaing Tong, Eastern Shan States, Burma.  He was told by the shopkeeper that these bottles were made at Wor Khok, where four households  make earthenware such as drinking water bottles, Buddhist altar vases and water  jars with lids as well as small quantities of black alms bowls. Water bottles  of two sizes were made, 26 cm and 16 cm in height. Bottles of larger size might  have two lugs or be without lugs. Tsuda writes, "On the version with lugs,  the footring also bore two holes aligned with the  lugs, allowing a cord to be passed through for securing the lid. On the version  without lugs, the footring had one hole which,  according to one man from a potter's family, was designed to prevent moisture  from accumulating inside the footring. They were used  for storing drinking water."

This bottle is the large size, with one hole bored on the footring. The bottles of small size were usually for  Buddhist offerings, while the large bottles were mainly for domestic use, but  occasionally for offerings. The large water bottles had a cylindrical aluminum  cup placed  on the mouth as a set. 

Tsuda observed the clay body of the bottles was very close  to kaolin, refined and light in color. The potters used the local clay dug in a  forest nearby the village. They made the bottles in five steps, working from  bottom to top, by coiling except the base. The kilns were underground up draft  kilns using bamboo as fuel. The bottles were blackened by reduction firing at  the final stage. After firing, they were burnished with flat, smooth stones  (Tsuda 2001, figs. 12–13).

Tsuda Takenori. 2001. "Myanmaa, Shyan-shū no tōji (1) (Ceramics in Shan States, Burma (1))." Tōsetsu 577: 44–57.

Tsuda Takenori. 2001. "Myanmaa, Shyan-shū no tōji (2) (Ceramics in Shan States, Burma (2))." Tōsetsu 578: 24–32.

4. (Louise Cort, 21  August 2003) Two bottles of this sort appear among  bottles identified as "modern earthenware from Chiengmai"  by W. A. Graham (Graham 1922). The source in Chiang Mai would have been the village of Mung Kung, populated by immigrant  Burmese potters.

Graham, W. A. 1922. "Pottery in Siam." The Journal of the Siam  Society 16(1): 1–27.

5. (Louise Cort, 16  September 2003) Wang Ningsheng, in an article on his  ethnoarchaeological research among the ethnic Dai potters in southern Yunnan  province (the area known as Sipsongpanna) conducted during the 1960s and 1980s  (Wang 2003, 241–262, plus figures), illustrated bottles of this sort made in  the village of Mannankan, located in the southern tip  of Yunnan province, near the border with Burma and also relatively close to  Laos (ibid., 242(map), 250–52, pls. 7–8).

The potters are men and use very small, hand-turned  turntables. This relates the production to that by the potters in Mung Kung,  south of Chiang Mai, who are said to be immigrant Burmese. Wang recorded the  ethnicity of the potters in southern Yunnan  as Dai Lu. Wang learned that the village formerly housed pottery production by women.  Around 1940 the technique of making this water bottle form was introduced to  the village by the headman of a Dai village near the Burmese border. The bottle  quickly became a popular product in the market of Jinghong, the major town in  Sipsongpanna. Gradually men replaced the women potters and concentrated on  production of the water bottle as a full time activity (ibid.,  250).

Slide library volunteer Sarah Shay commented that her mother  was born in Kunming,  and Sarah remembered seeing bottles of this type in her mother's house,  although she was not sure whether they were for use (her mother was Han) or  simply for decoration.

Bottles of this sort were certainly used in northern Laos, north of  Luang Prabang; I saw many in a Tai Lu household along the Ou  River when staying there in April, 1990. In 1990 Patricia Naenna  (Cheesman) told me that she had met an elderly man  making such bottles in Vientiane  while living there in the early 1970s.

Wang Ningsheng. 2003. "Yunnan  Daizu zhitao de minzu kaoguxue yanjiu (An Ethnoarchaeological Study on the Pottery-making  of the Dai People in Yunnan)." Kaogu Xuebao (Acta Archaeologica Sinica) 2 (149): 241–262, plus figs. 1–8.

6. (Louise Cort, 2  May 2005) On 18 May 1990 I visited the ethnic Tai Lu village  of Ban Koh, across the Mekong river from Jinghong in Sipsongpanna, southern Yunnan province. Among  the vessel shapes made by the lone male potter working in this village was a  bottle of this form, which he identified for me (by writing in Chinese on my  sketch) as a bottle for offering water to the Buddha and the ancestors in  temples. The Tai Lu are related to the Shan in Burma.

The Northern Thai term for this bottle form is ‘nam ton’.

7. (Louise Cort, 16  October 2005) Reviewing slides taken in Sakhon Nakhon province, Northeast  Thailand, in 1989, I noticed that a bottle of this type belonged to an esteemed  monk (Ajan Man or Ajan Fan)  commemorated in a museum. The monk also owned two unglazed stoneware water  bottles of the type made at kilns in northern Northeast Thailand (or possibly Laos).

This vessel shape is related to the bottle called surei in eastern India,  which in turn was introduced from western India  or Pakistan, so the shape  was probably transmitted first from India  to Burma.

8. (Louise Cort, 19  October 2006) A silver bottle of this form, with a hemispherical cup serving  also as a cap, is said to have been part of court regalia in Shan States,  Burma, or Lan Na, Northern Thailand (Conway 2003, 50–51). Conway  comments that the silver was mined in northern Shan States,  and that silver and gold vessels were used in consecration ceremonies and  bathing rites.

Conway, Susan. 2003. Power Dressing: Lanna,  Shan, Siam 19th century Court Dress. Bangkok: James Thompson  Foundation.  

9. (Louise Cort, 27  August 2007) A bottle of this type is in the  collection of the National Museum of Cambodia, Phnom Penh (kha  1242/H 615/ 3138).

10. (Louise Cort, 18  December 2007) An unglazed stoneware version of this vessel shape is  illustrated on the cover of Chārưk 1990, among a selection of nine  vessels seemingly excavated from the Maenam Noi kiln site, although the bottle  is not illustrated again in the text. This vessel suggests the longstanding  importance of this bottle shape.

Chārưk Wilaikǣo. 1990. Tao Mǣnam Nǭi 2 [Maenam Noi  Kilns, part 2]. Bangkok:  Krom Sinlapākǭn (Fine Arts Department).

11. (Louise Cort, 24  May 2007) The Museum of Vietnamese History, Ho Chi Minh History, has two  bottles of this type, of differing sizes (measurements not taken). No information  is available concerning their provenance. (See note 2.)

12. (Louise Cort, 21  February 2008) Archaeologist Roland Mourer, curator at the Musée  Guimet in Lyon, purchased a blackened earthenware  water bottle of this general type in Cambodia in the 1960s or early 1970s, but  he was not able to find out anything about its provenance. I saw the bottle in  storage at the museum on 7 September 1998.

13. (Louise Cort, 2 March 2008) Water bottles of this form  are among the black pottery vessels made by Shan potters in Papun, according to  Taw Sein-ko (Taw 1895, sheet 1). "For utility,  fineness, and elegance, the pottery manufactured by Shans at Papun is  unrivalled throughout the province."

In 2001 Tsuda Takenori saw production of black pottery in  eastern Shan State,  east of the town of Kyaing Tong (Keng Tung), in  the village of Wor Khuk,  where four families were working. They shared a small underground updraft kiln.  The pots were blackened at the end of firing by covering the vessels in the  ware chamber with rice husks and sealing the chamber with clay; during cooling  the clay absorbed the carbon (Tsuda 2005, 61–62 and fig. 24; see also Tsuda  2001 (2)).

Taw Sein-Ko. 1895. Monograph on  The Pottery and Glassxware  of Burma,  1894–1895. Rangoon:  Superintendent, Government Printing.  

Tsuda Takenori. 2005. "Myanmaa seyū  tōji—seisan gijitsu to hennen no tame no shiryō  (Glazed Ceramics in Myanmar:  Their Manufacturing Techinique and Historical  Documents for Dating)." Jōchi Ajiagaku (The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies) 23: 56–80  (Japanese), 55–56 (English summary).

Tsuda Takenori. 2001. "Myanmaa, Shyan-shū  no tōji (2) (Ceramics in Shan States, Burma  (2))." Tōsetsu 578: 24–32.

14. (Louise Cort, 15  March 2008) In conversation in January 1994, Charlotte Reith reported on her  field work in Burma that season, during which she learned that potters in one  or more villages near Keng Tung, Shan State, made long-necked pots used for  offering water to house guests. They were coated with red ochre slip, polished,  and fired red or else blackened during firing using rice husks to smother the  fire. In her 1999 field work, she also saw blackened water bottles made by male  potters in Nam Long village new Muse, Shan State. In conversation in June 2005  she mentioned seeing red and black water bottles as well as ash-glazed  stoneware vessels being sold in the market town of Mein  Kein (Mongkiang).  Unfortunately she was not allowed to visit the producing villages.