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

A tall stoneware vase of closely related form covered with a ‘partridge feather’ russet-mottled black glaze, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, from the Russell Tyson Collection, is illustrated by Mowry, Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 137-139, described as Northern black ware of Cizhou type. Mowry traces the use of the ancient term zhegu ban (partridge-feather mottles) to describe this type of glaze to a mid-tenth century Chinese miscellany written by Tao Gu (A.D. 903-970), and he suggests that the Tyson bottle-vase may have been produced at the Qinglongsi kilns at Baofeng, in Henan province where similar sherds have been found. Mowry cites for comparison another bottle of this type in the British Museum, of the same size and similar proportions as the present example, illustrated by Hobson, Handbook of the Pottery and Porcelain of the Far East in the Department of Oriental Antiquities, London, 1937, p. 31, fig. 46, which was reportedly discovered at Julu xian, Hebei province, a site which was destroyed by floods in A.D. 1108.

A russet-splashed black-glazed vase of similar form in the Palace Museum Beijing is illustrated in Gugong bowuyuan cang wenwu zhenpin quanji (33) Liang song ciqi, xia (The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Vol. 33, Porcelain of the Song Dynasty II), Hong Kong, 1996, p. 266, no. 243, described as Jizhou ware.

Compare also the black-glazed bottle-vase decorated with russet markings brushed on in a regular pattern, illustrated in Chinese Ceramics at the National Museum of Korea, Seoul 2007, pp. 168-169, no. 77; previously illustrated in Sekai toji zenshu (Ceramic Art of the World), Vol. 12, Tokyo, 1977, p. 132, no. 124.