Northern Song Dynasty (A.D. 960-1127)
with steep flaring sides rising to a wide mouth with gently rounded everted rim, decorated on the interior with bright reddish-brown splashes liberally applied over a lustrous black glaze, the underside covered with a russet-brown slip over the black glaze, the small circular foot wiped clean of glaze revealing the off-white body.
Diameter 5 inches (12.7 cm)
Similarly glazed tea bowls of this form excavated from the Northern Song stratum of the Cizhou kiln site at Guantai, Cixian, Hebei province are illustrated in the excavation report, Guantai Cizhou yaozhi (The Cizhou Kiln Site at Guantai), Beijing, 1997, pl. 65-1, with line drawings illustrating the profile of the distinctive shape on p. 268.
Two similar bowls, one from the Dane Collection, Harvard Art Museums and the other from the Scheinman Collection, are illustrated by Mowry, Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 142-143, nos. 38a and 38b. Compare also the bowls of this type illustrated by Sullivan, Chinese Ceramics, Bronzes and Jades in the Collection of Sir Alan and Lady Barlow, London, 1963, no. C. 330, pl. 55c, with caption on p. 62; by Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, Volume One, London, 1994, p. 258, no. 470; and by Rotondo-McCord in Heaven and Earth Seen Within: Song Ceramics from the Robert Barron Collection, New Orleans, 2000, pp. 98-99, no. 34, from the Spencer-Churchill Collection, Northwick Park, England.
北宋 磁州黑釉醬斑碗 徑 12.7 厘米