Lot 849. A Cizhou-type russet-splashed blackish-brown-glazed bowl, China, Jin dynasty, 12th-13th century. Estimate $7,000 - $9,000. Price Realized $32,500. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2015

The deep, rounded conical bowl covered on the interior with a lustrous blackish-brown glaze decorated with five large russet splashes composed of densely spaced russet flecks reserved against a ground of more dispersed russet flecks, the glaze also covering the exterior below the russet rim above a caramel glaze that falls short of the foot, exposing the buff ware; 7 3/8 in. (19 cm.) diameter, box

Provenance: The Collection of Robert H. Ellsworth, New York, acquired in Hong Kong, 1989.

Literature: R.D. Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, pp. 155-56, no. 48.

Exhibited: Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 23 December 1995 - 10 March 1996; China Institute Gallery, New York, 20 April - 6 July 1996; Elvehjem Museum, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 9 November 1996 - 19 January 1997.

Note: Dark-glazed bowls of this type, with large, evenly-spaced russet splashes, usually numbering between three and five, were popular wares produced at various Cizhou-type kilns in the north in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The present bowl, however, is an unusual example of this type, with the russet splashes diffusing into the speckled ground. A very similar bowl is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 12, Tokyo, 1977, no. 39. 

Christie's. THE COLLECTION OF ROBERT HATFIELD ELLSWORTH PART IV - CHINESE WORKS OF ART: METALWORK, SCULPTURE AND EARLY CERAMICS, 20 March 2015, New York, Rockefeller Plaza.