The bowl, a product of a kiln in Jizhou, Jiangxi province, is of rounded form resting on a roughly cut foot and slightly recessed base where the pale buff-colored, somewhat course body, not unusual for this ware, is visible. The “tortoiseshell” effect resulted from an opaque dark-brown glaze serving as a base with a lighter caramel-colored glaze of greater translucency forming patterns upon it, the lighter glaze here haloed by borders where glaze has drained away exposing the ceramic body. The caramel patches are dispersed in such a way that the bowl looks as if it is covered in flames, the surface appearing volatile, dynamic, flickering.
It is not entirely clear how the various “tortoiseshell” patterns were achieved. It has been suggested, however, that the present distinctive design, sometimes in China called “tiger’s fur,” “….occurs under the highest temperatures when the fluxing properties of magnesia and calcia in the overglazes are at their most effective, causing the dribbles of ash to dissolve the iron in the darker glaze and produce transparent amber-color streaks.”1 In her discussion quoted above Ellen Avril refers to Nigel Wood’s Chinese Glazes where he illustrates a vessel with similar markings to the present, importantly both reveal the bare stoneware body left exposed around the amber-glazed areas.2
Jizhou potters produced a great variety of wares, some decorated with designs inspired by metalware, textiles, and painting. They also looked to nature for inspiration: through a leaf plucked from nature that could be floated beneath a glaze where its carbonized skeleton was preserved in black after firing or through a combination of colors to produce the look of a tortoiseshell, as in the present bowl. Small containers or receptacles, hair ornaments, combs and jewelry fashioned from actual tortoiseshell had been in vogue since the Tang period and the popularity of this attractive material provided fodder for the Jizhou potter.
While these signature tortoiseshell-glazed wares of the Jizhou kilns were perfected during the Song dynasty, the popularity of the ceramics in Japan into the post-Song period was largely responsible for their continued production into the early Yuan at least, making it difficult to assign a piece to a specific dynasty. Tea bowls produced with dark glazes at the Jizhou kilns in Jiangxi province and the Jian ware of Fujian were christened by their Japanese collectors as temmoku, a term used in much of the world today in reference to these wares but at the same time overshadowing the appreciation for this wares that the Chinese upper-crust held close, with their devotion to tea drinking even predating the Song.
1. Ellen Avril in Dark Jewels: Chinese Black and Brown Ceramics from the Shatzman Collection, Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, 2002, pp. 47-48.
2. Nigel Wood, Chinese Glazes, London, 1999, illustration on p.152 (left) of a vessel in the Buffalo Museum of Science.
Fig. 1: Jizhou-ware bowl with “tiger fur” decoration, Song Dynasty, Jiangxi Provincial Museum, after Peng Minghan, ed., Jizhouyao; Yasu zhi jian,” Beijing, 2007, no. 6, p. 31.
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