The large Jun bowl with the deep rounded sides, rising from a splayed foot to a slightly inverted rim, applied overall with a milky lavender-blue bubble-suffused opaque glaze transitioning at the rim to a mushroom color, the glaze terminating unevenly at the foot revealing the dark stoneware body.

Provenance1. Sotheby's London, 14 November 2001, lot. 87
2. The Ten-views Lingbi Rock Retreat Collection, no. EK105.

Exhibited & Literature: J.J. Lally & Co., Early Chinese Ceramics: An American Private Collection, 28 March to 16 April 2005, New York, pl. 54.

Note: It is not difficult to find Jun bowls in the famous collection all over the world. A large Jun bowl excavated in the Yanling county relics in 1925, now in the Henan Provencal Museum (fig.1). See another one in Meiyintang Collection, illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. I, London, 2006, pl. 387 (fig.2). A smaller example can be seen in the Palace Museum, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Porcelain of the Song Dynasty (I), Hong Kong, 1996, pl.125; Another example, from the Sir Percival David Foundation, see Margaret Medley, Chinese Ceramics, 1976, pl.83. Also compare with two examples from Baur Collection, illustrated in The Baur Collection, Geneva: Chinese Ceramics, vol I, Geneva, 1968, pl.A31 and A32.

Poly Auction Hong Kong. Immaculately Exquisite - Selected Chinese Ceramics from The Ten-Views Lingbi Rock Retreat Collection, Hong Kong, 7 October  2019