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Lot Essay
Located in central Jiangxi province, the Jizhou kilns were perhaps the most daring, versatile and technically creative kilns of the Song dynasty. Although they produced a wide variety of wares, including northern-style white stonewares with molded and slip-painted designs, the kilns are most famous for their brown and black-glazed wares, particulary those that exhibit a tortoiseshell glaze, a striking glaze characterized by amber or buff-colored splashes against a dark brown ground, and the innovative techinque of using openwork paper cutouts as stencils to create resist designs. This bowl is remarkable for combining both of these techniques, by exhibiting the tortoiseshell glaze on the exterior and paper cut-out decoration on the interior. For a discussion of the processes involved in producing tortoiseshell glazes and designs using paper cut-outs, see R. Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers, pp. 36-7.
There is little doubt that this handsome bowl was used for drinking tea. Like Fujian, where the large Jianyao hare's fur-glazed bowl in this sale (lot 91) was produced, Jiangxi province was also an important tea-producing area, and the large number of tea bowls made at the Jizhou kilns, as well as those in Jian, reflect the increasing popularity of tea-drinking in China during the Song dynasty.
Bowls of this type are particuliarly highly prized, and examples can be found in many famous collections. A bowl of this design from the H. O. Havemeyer Collection, now in the the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is illustrated by S. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, rev. ed., 1989, p. 116, fig. 111; another is illustrated in Asiatic Art in the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 1973, p. 166, fig. 118; and another in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 10, Tokyo, 1980, fig. 35. A related bowl, decorated with three phoenixes in flight around a small plum blossom, is illustrated by Y. Mino and J. Robinson, Beauty and Tranquility: The Eli Lilly Collection of Chinese Art, Indianapolis, 1983, p. 224, pl. 86.
There is little doubt that this handsome bowl was used for drinking tea. Like Fujian, where the large Jianyao hare's fur-glazed bowl in this sale (lot 91) was produced, Jiangxi province was also an important tea-producing area, and the large number of tea bowls made at the Jizhou kilns, as well as those in Jian, reflect the increasing popularity of tea-drinking in China during the Song dynasty.
Bowls of this type are particuliarly highly prized, and examples can be found in many famous collections. A bowl of this design from the H. O. Havemeyer Collection, now in the the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is illustrated by S. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, rev. ed., 1989, p. 116, fig. 111; another is illustrated in Asiatic Art in the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 1973, p. 166, fig. 118; and another in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 10, Tokyo, 1980, fig. 35. A related bowl, decorated with three phoenixes in flight around a small plum blossom, is illustrated by Y. Mino and J. Robinson, Beauty and Tranquility: The Eli Lilly Collection of Chinese Art, Indianapolis, 1983, p. 224, pl. 86.