A Cizhou-Type Russet-Splashed Blackish-Brown-Glazed Bowl. Northern Song-Jin Dynasty, 12th-13th Century. Photo: Christie's Images Ltd 2012

The rounded, conical body is covered on the interior and upper exterior with a lustrous, variegated, blackish-brown glaze that is decorated on the interior with five russet splashes, and on the exterior falls in an irregular line atop a thin brown glaze that ends irregularly above the foot to expose the granular ware that has fired to a buff color. 7 1/8 in. (18.2 cm.) diam. Estimate $4,000 - $6,000

北宋/金 磁州窰系黑釉褐斑笠式盌

Provenance: J.J. Lally & Co., New York, 2004. 

Notes: A similar black-glazed stoneware bowl with five brushed-on russet markings in the Musée Guimet, Paris, is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 7, Tokyo, 1981, no. 40. Another closely related example, also with five russet-brown splashes, is illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, Chinesische Keramik: Meisterwerke aus Privatsammlungen, Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Köln, 1986, no. 41. A slightly smaller bowl of this type, with three russet markings, from the Scheinman Collection, is illustrated by R.D. Mowry in Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers, Cambridge, 1996, p. 148, no. 42. 

Christie's. Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art Part II, 13 September 2012. New York, Rockefeller Plaza