NORTHERN SONG DYNASTY (AD 960-1127)

Persimmon glazes were made at several northern Chinese kilns in the Song and early Jin periods, including the Ding and Yaozhou kilns, and were particularly admired on forms associated with the tea ceremony. It is noted in Cao Zhao’s 1388 publication Gegu Yaolun (The Essential Criteria of Antiques) that 'purple' (i.e. persimmon) and black Ding wares were even more expensive than white Ding wares (see Sir Percival David, Chinese Connoisseurship - The Ko Ku Yao Lun, London, 1971, p. 141).

A similar Ding persimmon-glazed bowl, also with a petal-lobed rim, is in the Freer Gallery of Art, illustrated by J. A. Pope, et. al., in The World’s Great Collections: Oriental Ceramics, vol. 9, The Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Tokyo, 1972, no. 62. Other Ding persimmon-glazed bowls include the example illustrated by S. Kwan, Song Ceramics from the Kwan Collection, Hong Kong, 1994, pp. 82-83, no. 23, and the Ding persimmon-brown glazed bowl of slightly larger size in the Princeton Art Museum illustrated by Z. Kwok, The Eternal Feast: Banqueting in Chinese Art from the 10^th to 14^th Century, Princeton, 2019, p. 170, no. 41.

A persimmon-glazed bowl of this form found at the Ding kiln site is illustrated in Ding Ware: The World of White Elegance – Recent Archaeological Findings, The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 2013, pp. 162-163, no. 36, where it is dated mid-Northern Song dynasty.