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

A very similar Jizhou conical tea bowl of this rare size and pattern in the collection of the Kyoto National Museum is illustrated in the catalogue of the exhibition mounted at the Asia Society by Hayashiya and Trubner, Chinese Ceramics from Japanese Collections: T’ang Through Ming Dynasties, New York, 1977, p. 76, no. 37, described as formerly in the possession of the Maeda family. The lengthy caption in the catalogue includes the statement: “This type of temmoku bowl was frequently mentioned in records of the early Muromachi period, and it is believed that this rare piece was brought to Japan at that time.” The same tea bowl was included in the travelling exhibition organized by Tobu Museum of Art, Hagi Uragami Museum, and The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, entitled Sōji: shinpin to yobareta yakimono (Song Ceramics), Tokyo, 1999, p. 118, no. 80.

Compare also the Jizhou conical tea bowl of smaller size decorated with the same paper-cut stenciled design on a similarly streaked background glaze in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing illustrated in Zhongguo wenwu jinghua daquan: Taoci juan (Compendium of Chinese Archaeological Treasures: Ceramics), Hong Kong 1993, p. 294, no. 417.

Another example of this rare pattern and form is illustrated by Wu, Earth Transformed: Chinese Ceramics in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, 2001, pp. 80-81, from the William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, where the author states: “symbolically, the combination of pheasant and blossoming branch was considered auspicious, known as jin shang tian hua (literally, “adding blossoms to brocades”, or heaping splendor upon splendor), it was a play on the word jin (brocade) which is contained in the Chinese character for “pheasant.”