A BLACK-GLAZED RUSSET-SPLASHED BOWL NORTHERN SONG / JIN DYNASTY

rising from a short straight foot to deep rounded sides with an incurved rim, applied overall with an unctuous black glaze faintly suffused with gold speckles and five russet splashes on the interior and dotting the exterior rim, the glaze thinning towards the base and stopping just short of the foot revealing the buff-colored body, the incurved rim dipped into white slip and covered with a transparent glaze

Bowls covered in a dark glaze with three to five evenly spaced splashes or medallions were produced at a number of Cizhou-type kilns in the 12th / 13th centuries. The white rims on vessels like the one on the present example, may have been inspired by the wide silver bands found on the rims of upper-class wares of the Song dynasty such as Ding ware. 

For a closely related bowl with five russet medallions, see one published in Michael Sullivan, Chinese Ceramics, Bronzes and Jades in the Collection of Sir Alan and Lady Barlow, London, 1963, pl. 51c; and another from the Scheinman Collection included in the exhibition, Born of Earth and Fire, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, 1992, cat. no. 62; and another in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, vol. 3, 2006, no. 1514.

See also a bowl from the Robert Barron collection of shallower form, illustrated in Robert D. Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers. Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1995, no. 41, previously sold in these rooms, 12th June 1984, lot 206, and again, Christie's New York, 30th March 2005, lot 305.