A Junyao purple-splashed 'lotus bud' waterpot, Song dynasty | 宋 鈞窰天藍釉紫斑雞心罐

Qin Dashu, Junyao Ceramics from the Beixuan Shuzhai Collection, Hong Kong, 2017, pl. 17.

秦大樹，《柏煊書齋．鈞窰》，香港，2017年，圖版17

This Junyao water pot is remarkable for its rich and attractively distributed purple splashes as most comparable vessels are predominantly glazed in blue. Starting from the 12th century onwards, potters began applying splashes of deep purplish red onto the blue ground by adding copper to the glaze before firing. As seen on this piece, the splashes randomly developed over the surface which strongly evokes the distribution of ink on paper, a quality appreciated particularly by literati scholars of the Southern Song period. 

A Junyao lotus bud waterpot of this shape and size and with copper-red splashes, from the British Rail Pension Fund, exhibited on loan at the Dallas Museum of Art between 1985 and 1988, was sold in our London rooms, 12th December 1989, lot 85. Compare also to a similar piece in the Palace Museum, Taipei, accession no. Gu ci 018358; in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol.1, London, 1994, pl. 392; Chūgoku tōji zenshū / Complete Collection of Chinese Ceramics, vol. 12, Kyoto, 1983, pl. 30; in Andre Leth, Catalogue of Selected Objects of Chinese Art in the Museum of Decorative Art Copenhagen, Copenhagen, 1959, pl. 86.