Bowl with leaf pattern,

early 12th–late 13th century

early 12th–late 13th century

Asia, China

Conical shaped tea bowl with body rising to a slightly finger-grooved rim. Light crackled russet color glaze covering the interior and most of exterior where it runs down leaving the knife-cut foot, base and lower section exposed with characteristic dark purplish-brown body. On the interior wall there is a leaf resist pattern of blue-black color dissolving into the russet ground and with some running of the russet glaze over the leaf, and some of the blue-black glaze running into the russet. Mouth rim is covered in the thin reddish brown remainder of the russet glaze that has drained from the thick formed rim.

The Jian kilns were active at Shuiji, near Jianyang, in northern Fujian province. They were known for hare's-fur dark glaze ware that were "intended for local domestic use, and must have found a place in most households, and it was used locally in the Ch'an Buddhist monasteries, because this was how the Japanese came to acquire so many examples" (Margaret Medley, The Chinese Potter, p. 162). According to Robert Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoishell, and Partridge Feathers, p. 30: "The Jian kilns initially produced humble wares for a local market; their tea bowl's rise to prominence parallels the rise of Fujianese tea," which was a frothy, whisked milk-white beverage that looked its best in dark bowls. Jian ware is characterized by hard, coarse grained, slate gray clay that usually fires purplish brown, covered inside and two thirds of outside with a thick iron oxide glaze, and thinly glazed lip. Bowls were fired in saggars, stacked one on top of the other, each bowl raised on a small fireclay button to raise it off the bottom.

This bowl is in the style of Jian ware with leaf decoration using a resist technique that is more characteristic of Jizhou ware ceramics, a technique the Japanese call temmoku. A leaf is adhered to the bottom of the bowl and the interior surface is then covered in glaze. In an oxidation firing, the leaf and the carbon it contains is burned out leaving a pale shadow of its form as a light yellowish brown stain. Exposed clay on bottom is slate gray with a purplish brown surface after firing, but the clay slightly is coarser than other example of Jianyao in the collection (e.g., y1934-45).