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

Two related ‘oil-spot’ bowls of this same type from the Dane Collection, now in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University, which are also dressed with black slip over the unglazed lower section, were included in an exhibition at Harvard University in 1996 and illustrated by Mowry in the catalogue, Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown-and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400–1400, Cambridge, 1996, p.149, no. 43a & b, attributed to the Xiaoyu cun kilns at Huairen, Shanxi province.

Mowry, op. cit. pp. 149–151, notes that these bowls made in Northern China, with a black wash over the pale stoneware body, were “inspired by tea bowls made at the Jian kilns in Fujian province” since the dark-bodied Jian wares, made in the Southern province of Fujian, were the “most favored among connoisseurs of tea by the late Northern Song”. Mowry also provides a detailed description of the method used to achieve the ‘oil-spot’ effect by the addition of iron-rich solutions to produce iron compounds in the glaze which would crystallize on the surface during firing and thus give rise to the desired silvery ‘oil-spots’.