Tea Bowl

With lustrous dark glazes that they colored primarily with iron oxides, potters of the Southern Song Dynasty in China (1127–1279) achieved unprecedented refinement in stoneware bowls, jugs, and other utilitarian shapes. Among Song kilns, the ones located at Jizhou in Jiangxi province in southeast China were the most technically creative potteries during this period. Jizhou factories introduced and pioneered new techniques of decoration that resulted in so-called tortoiseshell glazes, and also in papercut, glaze-resist, and naturalistic leaf designs. In some instances, the innovative mixture of cream-colored wood or bamboo ash with slip—liquid clay—was used to paint bird, insect, and plant designs over the rich brown glaze. Contemporary Song kilns elsewhere, at Jian, specialized instead in the production of dark-glazed tea bowls without painted decoration, producing works enlivened with naturally occurring streaks of the popular "hair’s fur" effect.