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

A Jianyao teabowl of this classic form showing the same silvery ‘hare’s-fur’ markings, from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is illustrated by Mowry in Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown-and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400–1400, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 219–220, no. 83, attributed by the author to the kilns at Shuiji, Jianyang county, Fujian province. Compare also the similar example from the Percival David Foundation, London, also with a silver mount on the rim, illustrated by Medley in The Chinese Potter, Oxford, 1976, p. 163, fig. 123.

Another black-glazed ‘hare’s fur’ Jianyao teabowl with silver-mounted rim is illustrated by Wu Tung in Earth Transformed: Chinese Ceramics in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 2001, pp. 72–73, dated to the Northern Song Dynasty, 12th century by the author who points out that this type of teabowl was favored by the emperor Huizong (r. 1101–1125) who was a great connoisseur of tea and wrote famous treatises on the subject. In the opinion of the emperor and other tea connoisseurs of the Song period, the dark ‘hare’s-fur’ glazed teabowls were particularly beautiful when filled with the frothy light-colored tea drunk in that period.