Lot 715. A russet-splashed black-glazed globular jar, Northern Song-Jin dynasty (960-1234). Estimate USD 20,000 - USD 30,000. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2016
The jar is well potted with a compressed globular body and a narrow mouth, and is supported on a slightly splayed foot. It is covered with a thick lustrous blackish-brown glaze accented with russet splashes, stopping neatly above the lower body and exposing the body of greyish-brown color. 4.15/16 in. (12.5 cm.) wide, Japanese wood box.
Provenance: Alfred E. Mirsky (1900-1974) Collection; Christie’s New York, 29 March 2006, lot 402.
Sen Shu Tey, Tokyo.
Literature: Christie's, The Classic Age of Chinese Ceramics, An Exhibition of Song Treasures from the Linyushanren Collection, Hong Kong, 2012, p. 88, no. 28.
Exhibited: Christie's, The Classical Age of Chinese Ceramics: An Exhibition of Song Treasures from the Linyushanren Collection, Hong Kong, 22 to 27 November 2012; New York, 15 to 20 March 2013; London, 10 to 14 May 2013.
Notes: The bold russet splashes accenting the blackish-brown glaze on this handsome jar are often referred to as zhegu ban, or ‘partridge-feather mottles’. In his discussion of a russet-splashed black-glazed meiping in the Art Institute of Chicago, R. D. Mowry, in Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown-and Black Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 137-8, no. 35, notes that the “term, zhegu ban (partridge-feather mottles) appears in texts of the mid-tenth century to describe ceramics with mottled decoration,” and that ‘partridge-feather mottles’ began to appear in dark-glazed Cizhou-type wares in the eleventh century. The glaze on the present jar, with its bold, yet well-controlled splashes of even russet tone, is particularly successful and attractive.
Christie's. The Classic Age of Chinese Ceramics: The Linyushanren Collection, Part II. 15 September 2016, New York, Rockefeller Plaza