A large russet-splashed blackish-brown-glazed bowl, Jin dynasty, 12th-13th century. © Christie's Image 2003

Of Cizhou type and of deep rounded form, covered on the interior and the upper portion of the exterior with a lustrous black glaze with subtle 'hare's fur' markings below russet coloring at the rim, with five large diffuse russet splashes on the interior, the unglazed lower body and foot of yellowish buff color - 7¾in. (19.7cm.) diam. Lot 243. Estimate $10,000 - $15,000. Price Realized $11,353 

Provenance: Professor Jan Hellner Collection, no. ck 16.
James B. Godfrey 

Property from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. James E. Breece III

Exhibited: Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown-and-Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums; China Institute Gallery, New York; Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, 1995-97, no. 47. 

Notes: 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 twelth and thirteenth centuries. The present bowl, however, is an unusual example of this type, with the russet splashes diffusing into the 'hare's-fur' ground. A very similar bowl is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and illustrated inOriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 12, Tokyo, 1977, no. 39.

Two related Jin dynasty russet-splashed bowls were included in the same exhibition in which the present lot was also shown, the first from the Dr. Robert Barron Collection, the second from the Scheinman Collection, illustrated by R. Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1996, pp. 147-8, nos. 41 and 42 respectively. Another bowl of this type is illustrated by J. Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, vol. 1, Geneva, 1999, p. 73, no. 32. 

CHRISTIE'S. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 18 September 2003, New York, Rockefeller Plaza