A 'Cizhou' russet-splashed black-glazed 'partridge feather' vase, Northern Song / Jin dynasty

Sotheby's London, 9th June 2004, lot 163.

Enrobed in a shimmering black glaze punctuated by russet splashes, the present vase is an extraordinary example of the rustic yet refined tastes of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127). While black-glazed wares of this type had received little attention in prior eras, with the advent of the Song dynasty, these more minimalist yet striking designs appear to have gained imperial favor. Song Emperor Huizong (r. 1100-1125), for example, is known to have been a particularly ardent connoisseur of the arts and an advocate for more restraint in decoration. As Patricia Buckley Ebrey notes (Accumulating Culture. The Collections of Emperor Huizong, Seattle and London, 2008, p. 344), “[Huizong] came to the throne believing that the court often over-decorated buildings. He complained that one of the last buildings built during Zhezong’s [his predecessor’s] reigns looked as gaudy as jewelry. Later, when he commissioned buildings himself, he insisted on simpler styles”, a predilection that did not remain restricted to architecture.

A taste for spontaneous ceramic designs reminiscent of natural markings, like feathers or furs, was a key part of this aesthetic shift. As Robert D. Mowry notes, the term zhegu ban, ‘partridge-feather mottles’, was already in use by the 10th century and seems to apply to black wares like the present flecked with areas of iron oxide; see Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers. Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 1996, p. 32.

With an enchanting decoration and distinctive well-proportioned shape that welcomes the hand to lift it, the present vase exemplifies the very best of Song dynasty ceramics. Today, only a handful of closely comparable examples of this type appear to survive: a larger vase of very similar form with overall smaller rust-brown splashes, from the Alfred Schoenlicht and Marianne Landau collections, sold in our London rooms, 13th December 1955, lot 20, included in the exhibition Song Chinese Ceramics: 10th to 13th Century, Eskenazi, London, 2003, cat. no.7 and sold again in our London rooms, 3rd November 2021, lot 114, for £252,000; another of this large size illustrated in Warren E. Cox, The Book of Pottery and Porcelain, vol.1, New York, 1944, pl. 54 (top left), sold at Christie’s New York, 16th September 2016, lot 1306; a third example of similar size to the present sold in these rooms, 7th February 1974, lot 156; and a fourth smaller example included in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. 1, Tokyo, 1976, pl. 563.