Lot 94. A rare 'Jian' oil-spot bowl, Song dynasty (960-1279). Diameter 5 in., 12.8 cm. Estimate 80,000 — 100,000 USD. Lot sold 162,500 USD. Photo Sotheby's.

heavily potted, the rounded sides rising from a short foot to a slightly everted rim, indented below the rim, covered overall with a lustrous black glaze infused to the interior and exterior with rust-colored speckles and displaying an iridescent 'oily' halo, the countersunk base revealing the coarse and dense black body. 

Note: It is extremely rare to find an oil-spot bowl from the southern Jian kilns of Fujian province and most examples today are found in Japan, where they have long been prized and known as yuteki temmoku (oil-spot temmoku). This type of glaze was so popular that it was copied by several northern kilns, which applied a dark brown slip to the unglazed part at the base to hide their light gray or brown stoneware body. These 'oil-spots' were formed when oxides of iron segregated themselves from the iron-saturated glaze during firing and crystallized on the surface during cooling (Rober D. Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers. Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1995, p. 222).

Several examples of northern-type 'oil-spot' bowls can be found in Japanese museums; see one designated as 'National Treasure' by the Bunkacho (Agency for Cultural Affairs), in the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, exhibited together with two further related bowls, one from the Tokugawa Art Museum and the other from the Nezu Institute of Fine Arts in Kyoto, in Tobutsu temmoku, Chado Shiryokan, Kyoto, 1994, cat. nos. 2-4. A further bowl in the Ryoko-in Temple, Kyoto, is published in Chugoku no toji. Temmoku, Tokyo, 1999, pl. 24; and one in the Tokyo National Museum is included in the Illustrated Catalogues of Tokyo National Museum: Chinese Ceramics, Tokyo, 1988, cat. no. 610.

Sotheby's. Song Tradition: Early Ceramics from the Yang De Tang Collection. New York, 17 march 2015, 11:00 AM