A FINE RED-BROWN STRIPED "JIAN" BOWL

Description:

China, Southern Song dynasty
D. 12 cm
Potted with deep sides rising from a short straight foot to a thin concave groove below the rim, ücovered with a lustrous black glaze infused with russet "rabbit fur" that runs from the rim and collects in the groove;covered with a glossy black glaze interspersed with rust-red "rabbit fur" that runs from the rim and collects in the groove, the glaze rising neatly above the foot to reveal the dark brown body,
Collection Dr Rainer Kreissl (1924 - 2005), collected before 1990 - Important Southern German private collection
The Jian bowls with rabbit skin stripes, which were regarded by the Song Emperor Huizong (r. 1101-25) as one of the most sought-after tea wares, enjoyed a high reputation not only in China but also in Japan. The dark and dynamically speckled inside forms an attractive contrast to the fine white foam of the whipped tea. The bowls produced in the Jian kilns in Fujian province were probably brought to Japan as early as the Kamakura period (1185-1333), when Japanese monks discovered the art of ritual tea preparation in Buddhist temples in Südchina.
See äsimilar bowls of this type, including one held at the National Palace Museum in Taipei (accession number 故-瓷-008624) and three other examples now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (accession numbers 29.100.230 , 29.100.227, 17.179.2), the first recently included in the exhibition Kyoto: Capital of Artistic Imagination, New York, 2020, the second illustrated in Denise Patry Leidy, How to Read Chinese Ceramics, New York, 2015, pl. 15 - Very well preserved