NORTHERN SONG DYNASTY, 11TH CENTURY

Although best known for their superb celadon-glazed stonewares, the Yaozhou kilns also produced outstanding black and brown-glazed wares such as this rare bowl, spiritedly decorated with splashes of rust-brown. Excavations in 1973 at the Huangpu kiln complex in Tongquan, Yaozhou county, revealed shards with rust-brown decoration very similar to that on the present bowl, confirming its exact place of manufacture; see Zhou Zhenxi and Lu Jianguo, 'Yaozhouyao yizhi diaocha fajue xin shouhuo,' Kaogu yu wenwu 3 (1980); p. 56, fig. 2, no. 4.
A russet-decorated black-glazed bowl of this shape from the Falk Collection was sold in these rooms, 20 September 2001, lot 75, and another bowl of this shape covered in a russet-brown glaze is illustrated in Zhongguo taoci quanji; 10, Yaozhou yao, Shanghai, 1985, no. 37.