Song Dynasty (A.D. 960-1279)
of almost spherical form with wide mouth and short neck, the gray stoneware covered with cream white slip and a dark olive-brown overslip through which bands of short oblique stokes loosely arranged in horizontal rows have been cut with a sharp-toothed roulette tool, the neck and foot in plain white, and with a glossy transparent glaze overall, the domed cover decorated to match.
Height 4 3⁄8 inches (11.1 cm)
It is rare to see a pottery jar of this type complete with matching cover, but examples can be found in the following museum collections: the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art, illustrated by Mino in the exhibition catalogue, Charm of Black & White Ware; Transition of Cizhou Type Wares, Osaka, 2002, no. 56, p. 86; the Seattle Art Museum, illustrated by Trubner in the Los Angeles County Museum exhibition catalogue entitled Chinese Ceramics – From the Prehistoric Period Through Ch’ien Lung; A Loan Exhibition from Collections in America and Japan, Los Angeles, 1952, no. 227, p. 90; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, illustrated in The Charles B. Hoyt Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Vol. II, Boston, 1972, no. 105; and the Tokyo National Museum, in the Illustrated Catalogues of the Tokyo National Museum, Vol. I: Chinese Ceramics, Tokyo, 1988, no. 563, p. 140.
A very similar jar without the cover in the Baur Collection, Geneva, is illustrated by J. Ayers in the Baur Collection:Chinese Ceramics, Vol. I, no. A76 and again, in the new catalogue by the same author issued in 1999, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, Vol. I, illustrated in color on p. 66, no. 22. Another example lacking the cover is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts, illustrated in the catalogue of The Raymond A. Bidwell Collection of Chinese Bronzes and Ceramics, Springfield, 1965, p. 72, left. Another example from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Yeung Wing Tak, exhibited and published by the Guangzhou City Cultural Property Bureau (The King of Nanyue Tomb Guangzhou Museum) in 1997, is illustrated in the catalogue of Black Porcelain from the Mr. and Mrs. Yeung Wing Tak Collection, Guangzhou, 1997, no. 45, pp. 94-95, described as Baofeng ware from Henan province.
宋 磁州黑釉剔籠紋小蓋罐 高 11.1 厘米