NORTHERN SONG-JIN DYNASTY (960-1234)

The bold russet splashes accenting the blackish-brown glaze on this handsome jar are often referred to as zhegu ban, or ‘partridge-feather mottles’. In his discussion of a russet-splashed black-glazed meiping in the Art Institute of Chicago, R. D. Mowry, in Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown-and Black Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 137-8, no. 35, notes that the “term, zhegu ban (partridge-feather mottles) appears in texts of the mid-tenth century to describe ceramics with mottled decoration,” and that ‘partridge-feather mottles’ began to appear in dark-glazed Cizhou-type wares in the eleventh century. The glaze on the present jar, with its bold, yet well-controlled splashes of even russet tone, is particularly successful and attractive.