Lobed flower pot with drainage holes. Stoneware body covered in blue and purple glazes with olive-green on the base. Official Jun ware 官鈞窯. Juntai, Yuxian, Henan province 河南省, 禹縣, 鈞台. Ming dynasty, about AD 1368–1435. On loan from Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art. PDF 33 © Trustees of the British Museum

Height: 191 mm. Diameter: 273 mm. Diameter: 141 mm (base). Official Jun stoneware flower pot with six lobes, flattened mouthrim with narrow raised band at the edge, and high flaring sides. The flower pot has thick opalescent purple glaze passing into crimson with bluish suffusions. There is an inscription on the base, and six round drainage holes, which have been filled with clay.

This Jun ware flower pot is incised with the number 二 (er ‘two’) on the base. Many scholars have changed their views on the dating of these ‘Official’ Jun wares, which were once all credited to the Northern Song dynasty. This attribution appears in Qing dynasty works such as Lan Pu’s (fl. 1815) 景德鎮陶錄 (Jingdezhen Tao Lu ‘Account of Ceramics at Jingdezhen’) and persisted until the late 1990s. In part, the attribution was based on linking sherds of ‘Official’ Jun wares found at Juntai to a surface find at the same place of an inscribed mould for late Northern Song coins. Further research now suggests this mould is unlikely to be of the period. Henan Archaeology Institute’s 2004 excavations, Shanghai Museum’s thermoluminescence tests and Shenzhen Municipal Institute of Archaeology’s seminar propose dates ranging from the fourteenth to early fifteenth century for ‘Official’ Jun ware. 

Bibliographic reference: Hobson, Robert L, A Catalogue of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain in the Collection of Sir Percival David Bt., F.S.A., London, The Stourton Press, 1934Hobsob, Robert L, A Catalogue of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain in the Collection of Sir Percival David Bt., F.S.A., London, The Stourton Press, 1934

Yorke Hardy, Sheila, Tung, Ju, Kuan, Chun, Kuang-tung & Glazed I-hsing Wares in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London, University of London, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1953

Pierson, Stacey, Illustrated catalogue of Ru, Guan, Jun, Guangdong and Yixing wares in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London, University of London, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1999

Pierson, Stacey, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art: A Guide to the Collection, London, SOAS, Univeristy of London, 2002

Scott, Rosemary, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art: A Guide to the Collection, London, SAOS, Univeristy of London, 1989