NORTHERN SONG-JIN DYNASTY, 12TH-13TH CENTURY

The brilliant purple splashes on the current bowl were produced by the addition of copper oxides to the surface of unfired glaze, a decorative technique that appeared on Jun wares starting from the end of the 11th century. In the 2001 excavation of the Liujiamen Jun ware kiln site in Shenhou, Yuzhou city, Jun ware shards decorated with large red and purple areas were found in the late Northern Song strata, and illustrated in ‘Liujiamen junyao fajue jianbao’ (Brief of the Excavation of Jun Ware at Liujiamen), Wenwu (Cultural Relics), 2003, no. 11, fig. 13 and 19. From the same excavation, shard of a small bowl with rounded sides and a slightly inverted rim, strongly reminiscent of the current bowl was also found in the late Northern Song stratum, and a line drawing is illustrated ibid., p. 34, fig. 15.7
Jun bowls with splashes on both the interior and exterior are highly sought after. Examples of similar bowls, mostly of below 9 cm. in diameter, include one in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Porcelain of the Song Dynasty (I), The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 1996, p. 246, pl. 222 (8.3 cm. diam.); another in the collection of the Percival David Foundation, illustrated by S. Pierson, Song Ceramics: Objects of Admiration, London, 2003, p. 61, pl. 20 (PDF 45B) (8.6 cm. diam.); one in the Metropolitan Museum, illustrated by S. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1975, p. 87, no. 80 (50.145.316) (8.6 cm. diam.). Other examples are bowls illustrated by J. Ayers, The Baur Collection, Geneva, 1968, vol. 1, nos. A31 and A32 (both 8.5 cm. diam.); in the T.Y. Chao Private and Family Trust Collections, Part II, sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 19 May 1987, lot 209 (9.2 cm. diam.); and in the Edward T. Chow Collection, sold at Sotheby's London, 7 June 2000, lot 93 (9 cm. diam.).