This jue cup is modeled after the shape of ancient bronze ritual vessels. It features an oval spout in the front and a pointed tail at the rear. A sculpted dragon coils around and rises above the rim, while the body rests on a circular foot. The exterior is decorated in iron red with a five-clawed dragon soaring amid clouds, below which appear stylized sea-wave and rock patterns. The foot is encircled with wave motifs and double lines. A band of unglazed biscuit encircles the base, and the interior is pure white without ornamentation. Beneath the rim is inscribed a four-character zhuanshu mark, “Yongle nianzhi” (“Made in the Yongle Period”).

Xu Shen’s Shuowen Jiezi of the Eastern Han records: “A jue is a ritual vessel. Its form imitates the ancient bronze jue, containing fragrant chang wine, and is held with both hands for drinking. Its design, resembling a bird’s cry and harmonious rhythm, is meant to express ritual propriety.”

Bronze jue vessels were among the most common and fundamental wine vessels and sacrificial implements of the Shang and Western Zhou dynasties. The Confucian classic Liji · Liqi states: “In ancestral temple sacrifices, the noble offer wine with jue, the lesser with gu, the honored raise the zhi, and the humble the horn cup.” This attests to the high status of the jue in ancient ritual systems. Throughout more than a millennium of early Chinese history, bronze jue played an essential role in ancestral rites. In traditional Chinese cosmology, reverence for ancestral temples was linked to state stability, and ritual vessels—though derived from utilitarian forms—were endowed with profound symbolic and political significance.

After the Bronze Age, during the Southern Song when Emperor Gaozong relocated southward, the bronze ritual vessels preserved from the Northern Song were “almost entirely lost.” As the state weakened, ceramic versions came to replace bronze ritual implements. From the Southern Song onward, this substitution gradually became institutionalized. In “A Study of Qing Dynasty Official Ceramic Prototypes in the Palace Museum,” Wang Guangyao notes:
“From the late Northern Song onward, Ding, Ru, Yue, Xiuneisi, the two Imperial Kilns under the Jiaotan altar, and Longquan kilns all produced ceramic ritual vessels modeled on bronze forms… In the early Southern Song, mid-to-late Yuan, and throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, ceramic ritual wares were continuously produced and used in state sacrifices.”

In the first year of the Hongwu reign (1368), the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang stated regarding the ritual vessels of the imperial ancestral temple:
“Three wine zun, eight gold jue, and sixteen porcelain jue are to be placed in the east and west of the hall.”
This demonstrates that porcelain jue remained important ritual vessels in the early Ming. Surviving white-glazed juetestify to this tradition. During the Yongle period, numerous white-glazed and blue-and-white jue were produced, along with the innovative jue-pan combination, in which the jue and its stand are integrated as a single piece.

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