A RARE BLACK-GLAZED 'OIL SPOT' BOWL NORTHERN SONG DYNASTY | 北宋 黑釉油滴茶盞

A Hong Kong private collection, by repute.

傳香港私人收藏

Elegantly potted with wide flaring sides and a short foot, this bowl is special for its attractive silver speckles that enhance the rich dark-brown glaze. Its buff-coloured body visible at the foot, suggests it was produced at one of the many Cizhou-type kilns that produced black-glazed wares in the Northern Song dynasty. Archaeological excavations at one such kiln complex, the Dangyangyu kilns in Xiuwu, Henan province, have unearthed black-glazed wares with similar features: from the thick footring and the glazed interior of the foot, to the uneven application of the speckles on the glaze. See for example a reconstructed bowl of this form but larger size, and with russet speckles, recovered at Xiuwu, illustrated in Series of China’s Ancient Porcelain Kiln Sites. Dangyangyu Kiln of China, Beijing, 2011, pl. 59.

Bowls of this form covered in this dark-brown glaze and with silver speckles are very rare and no other closely related examples appear to have been published, although a bowl with silver speckles is offered in this sale, lot 28, and a pair of conical bowls with large silvery splashes, in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, was included in the Museum’s exhibition Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers. Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazes Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1995, cat. no. 45a and b.