of deep conical form, with a very slight groove below the lip and a shallow straight foot, covered overall with a thick lustrous black glaze terminating in thick drops just above the unglazed foot showing the dark brown body beneath, the interior and exterior suffused with light silvery 'hares-fur' striations. 

Property fom the Rui Xiu Lou Collection.

Note: 'Jian’ tea bowls such as the present piece along with a whole range of black-glazed tea bowls derive their current designation tenmoku (or temmoku, Chinese tianmu) from these first encounters that took place in the Song dynasty (960-1279), notably in the Tianmu mountain range of Lin’an county, north Zhejiang province. In Japan tenmoku tea bowls have been admired, treasured and reverentially used in the tea ceremony ever since. Nogime [‘ear of grain’] is the Japanese term for the striations of the glaze that in China and the West are likened to ‘hare’s fur.

Tenmoku tea bowls are a case apart among Song dynasty ceramics. No other kiln centre besides that of Jianyang in Fujian, which produced these black bowls, was bold enough to limit its output to one single product. Other kilns, even if they specialized in one type of ceramic, all produced a large variety of wares, in different qualities and shapes, for different clients and functions. To concentrate on the manufacture of black tea bowls reflects the strong demand for and immense popularity of these wares.

Black wares from Fujian are mentioned and recommended as tea bowls in poems and essays since the early Northern Song period (960-1127), by scholars, see Feng Xianming, Zhongguo gu taoci wenxian jishi (Annotated Collection of Historical Documents on Ancient Chinese Ceramics), Taipei, 2000, p. 124, and Robert D. Mowry, Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge Mass., 1996, p. 30.