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

A similar Jianyao tea bowl is illustrated by Mowry, Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 218-219, no. 82 and the same bowl previously was illustrated by Dubosc, Mostra d’Arte Cinese: Settimo Centenario di Marco Polo (Exhibition of Chinese Art: The Seventh Centenary of Marco Polo), Venice, 1954, pp. 138-139, no. 495.  Another Jianyao ‘hare’s fur’-glazed teabowl of this classic form, in the Percival David Foundation, London, is illustrated by Pierson, Song Ceramics: Objects of Admiration, London, 2003, pp. 44-45, no. 12.

Compare also the Jianyao ‘hare’s fur’-glazed teabowl with silver-mounted rim illustrated by Wu, Earth Transformed: Chinese Ceramics in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 2001, pp. 72-73, where the author states that this type of tea bowl was favored by the emperor Huizong (r. 1101-1125), who was a great connoisseur of tea and wrote famous treatises on the subject.