J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York

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Past Exhibition

SONG DYNASTY CERAMICS:
The Ronald W. Longsdorf Collection

March 15 - April 13, 2013

56.
AN UNUSUAL BROWN-GLAZED PORCELAIN TEA BOWL

Southern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1127-1279)

heavily potted in white porcellaneous clay, with thick flaring sides rising from a small foot with broad rim and with a shallow angle cut around the lower sides, the wide mouth with an indented ‘finger groove’ on the exterior below the tapered lip, covered with a mottled dark brown glaze on the interior and exterior, the mouthrim wiped clean to allow the white body to show through a clear glaze of pale bluish tint, the brown glaze bleeding onto the white rim on the exterior but neatly controlled on the interior, the base and lower sides of the exterior unglazed, revealing the sugary-white body.

Diameter 4 34 inches (12 cm)

The white porcelain body of this bowl is a very rare feature, but the shape of the bowl, the heavy potting, the shallow angle cut low on the sides and the treatment of the foot and the rim all are typical of tea bowls made of dark purplish-brown stoneware at the Jian kilns in Fujian province during the Song dynasty. Field research has proven that elsewhere in Fujian province, white porcelain wares, mostly with transparent-bluish ‘qingbai’ glaze were in production at Dehua and other kilns during the Southern Song period. No other similar bowl with brown and ‘qingbai’ glaze combined on a porcelain body appears to have been previously published, but Fujian province and the Dehua kilns seem the most likely origin of the present example.

南宋    黑釉白口盞    徑  12  厘米