SOUTHERN SONG DYNASTY (1127-1279)

Jian tea bowls were held in high esteem by Song scholar-official class and even the emperors. Cai Xiang (1012-1067), the famous calligrapher and high official in the Northern Song court, designated the ‘hare’s fur’ tea bowls from Jian’an the most appropriate utensil in serving tea in his two-chapter treatise on tea entitled Cha lu (A Record of Tea). He believed the white tea looked best in black-glazed bowls and the slightly thicker wall of Jian wares help to retain the heat of the tea. By the early twelfth century, the connoisseurship of Jian tea bowls was further developed by the Emepror Huizong (1082-1135). In his twenty-chapter treatise on tea, Daguan chalun (A Discourse on Tea in the Daguan Era) of 1107, the Huizong Emperor commented that “the desirable color of a tea bowl is bluish black and the best examples display clearly streaked hairs.”

During the Southern Song dynasty, tea drinking was customary in Buddhist monasteries. The Southern Song dynasty painting Luohans Drinking Tea, from the set Daitokuji denrai Gohyakurakanzu (The Daitokuji 500 Luohan Paintings) that were brought to Japan from China around the same time, demonstrated that Jian bowls of similar form as the present bowl were well preserved in Buddhist monasteries. Together with Buddhist paintings, the tradition of tea drinking and appreciation of tea bowls were introduced to Japan by Japanese monks who traveled to China. In fact, the Japanese term for Jian ware tea bowls, tenmoku, is derived from the name of famous Zen Buddhism Mountain, the Tianmu Mountain outside Hangzhou. Over the years, bowls such as the current example were treasured and handed down by generations of Chinese and Japanese connoisseurs.

A larger (16.8 cm. diam.) Jian tea bowl of similar shape to the present tea bowl, from the Falk Collection, is illustrated by R. Mowry in Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 217-218, no. 81, and was subsequently sold at Christie’s New York, 20 September 2001, lot 91.