Lot 8. A black-glazed 'oil-spot' bowl, Northern Song-Jin dynasty. Diameter 3  1/2  in., 8.9 cm. Estimate 40,000 — 60,000 USD. Lot sold 68,750 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

delicately potted with an incurved rim, supported on a short foot ring, covered with an unctuous black-brown glaze painted with irregular metallic purplish 'oil-spots', stopping short of the foot to leave an unglazed area covered with dark brown slip, Japanese wood box (2). 

Provenance: Private Japanese collection. 

Note: Of superb shape and outstanding finish, this is an exceptional example of an 'oil-spot' bowl, most likely produced in Shanxi province. For others of comparable quality, see a pair of similar black-glazed 'oil-spot' bowls illustrated in John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, Geneva, 1999, vol. 1, pls 29 and 30. Compare also a pair in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, included in the exhibition Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1995-96, cat. nos 43a and b; a single bowl with strikingly identical small 'oil-spot' from the Ryoko-in Temple, Kyoto, illustrated in Chugoku no toji: Temmoku, Tokyo, 1999, pl. 24; and a single bowl from the collection of Hirota Matsushige, published in the Illustrated Catalogues of Tokyo National Museum: Chinese Ceramics I, Tokyo, 1988, pl. 610. An oil-spot shallow bowl attributed to Shanxi in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Porcelain of the Song Dynasty, Vol. 1, Hong Kong, 1996, pl. 204. 

Sotheby's. Monochrome, New York, 15 sept. 2015