SOUTHERN SONG DYNASTY (1127-1279)

Among the daring and innovative techniques for which the Jizhou kilns in Jiangxi province are most famous is the technique of using paper cut-outs as stencils to create resist designs. Carefully detailed on the interior with fifteen stylized papercut plum blossoms, with an extremely well-preserved glossy glaze, this bowl is an exceptional example of its type. For a discussion of the processes involved in producing designs using paper cut-outs, see R. Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1996, pp. 36-7.

A bowl of similar decoration and size (15.2 cm. diam.), but a more golden-toned ground on the interior, from the Avery Brundage Collection, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, is illustrated by R. Mowry, ibid., p. 250, no. 101. For examples of smaller size, see a bowl from the Charles B. Hoyt Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, Tokyo, 1980, vol. 10, no. 171, and the bowl from the Charlotte Horstmann Collection sold at Christie’s New York, 26 May 2003, lot 218.