The stoneware vessel is heavily potted, ovoid in shape, sturdily supported on a broad solid foot trimmed from the flat base, its wide cylindrical neck splaying to a thickened rim, a short roughly cylindrical spout high on the shoulder with a thick triple strap handle on the opposite side attached high on the neck and at a point high on the shoulder and on opposite sides between the spout and handle two small loop-shaped lugs at the base of the neck. The dark, opaque glaze thinly applied in one layer appears black in color save from where it thins to an amber-brown on the mouth rim and projecting areas of the handle. The glaze stops in an irregular line well above the foot also leaving the base unglazed, the exposed body surface a buff grey in color, relatively course, quite hard and dense with the interior fully glazed.
Since the production of high-fired “black” stonewares at the Yue kilns of southern Zhejiang province during at least the third century, kilns from Anhui to Henan, Hebei, Shaanxi and Shanxi followed suit and ovoid ewers like the present became the flavor of the day especially in the post Six Dynasties period not only in black but in white wares as well.
The best known and perhaps most highly productive sites for black wares were at the Huangye kiln in Gongyi city in Henan province, known primarily and famously for the production of sancai, “three-colored” earthenwares, during the Tang period; the Huangpu or Huangbaozhen site in Tongchuan in Shaanxi province, the precise area famed during the Song as the center of Yaozhou “Northern Celadon” production but produced quantities of black glazed wares including ewers comparable to the present; and the kiln at Shouzhou in Anhui province. The present piece appears to accord well with examples from Anhui (figs.1).1
- See also black-glazed ewer, Tang dynasty, 8th-9th century, from the Shouzhou kiln, Anhui province, after Kaogu, 1988:8, pl.VI, fig. 6.
Fig. 1: Black-glazed ewer, Tang dynasty, 8th-9th century, produced at the Shouzhou kiln, excavated in Huainan city, Huainan Museum, after Zhang Bai, Zhongguo qutu ciqi quanji, Beijing 2008 pl. 86, p. 86.
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