Description
Description: Rare Chinese Jun bowl of pure, plain blue glaze. In the ancient Chinese literature, this type of Jun blue is said of having the color of the “sky after the rain”, referring to its purity and uniformity. This lustrous sky-blue glaze is traditionally considered to be the most desirable color for monochrome Jun wares. The potting is thin, the foot well finished, the glaze stopping at the foot without excessive running. The glaze compact and opaque, not crackled. Bowls of this quality and size are very rare; read the Notes below.
Dating: Jin dynasty
Size: 22.3 cm diameter
Provenance: Antiquarian market
References: See in the last picture a similar bowl sold by Sothebys.
Notes: 1) There is a huge difference in quality between these bowls of the late Song/Jin Dynasty and those of the subsequent Yuan dynasty, and later; compare this bowl with the Yuan Jun bowl J12, although that one is among the best ones for the period. Only the Jun vessels made during Song and Jin are completely covered by a glaze that has an almost constant thickness everywhere, which is demonstrated by the uniformity of the color, as explained in the Note 2) here below. The well controlled glaze allows the complete glazing of the vessel. After Jin, the glaze is more running, the composition is no more the same, all this resulting in streaks of different color and pooling of the glaze at the bottom. To prevent sticking of the vessels in the kiln due to the excessive running, on those vessels the glaze stops farther from the foot.
2) The Jun glaze is deserving a special appreciation for its unique feature. For centuries, it has been a mystery for the ceramists, who attempted to reproduce this glaze with no success. Its secret has been only understood in the sixties, thanks to the electronic microscope. It has been found that the color of this glaze is not due to some ingredient, either metal oxides or minerals. It is an optical phenomenon. In short, myriads of minuscule glass droplets are produced within the glaze during the cooling phase. The size of these droplets is so small that it interacts with the wavelength of the blue in the spectrum of visible light. Because of that, the blue is partially reflected. This phenomenon is known in Physic as Rayleigh effect, and it is the same reason why the sky is blue, being the blue light diffused by the droplets of water suspended in the air. In fact, the blue of this glaze is darker in the thicker areas of the glaze, and disappear in the thinner areas, like the rim of vessels or the border of the glaze, where its real color can be observed, a light straw color. All this means that, being an optical effect, the blue is only visible under reflected light and not in backlight, when the light is passing through it. This is very well shown in the penultimate picture: the shard in that image is seen in direct light in the left part of the image, and in backlight in the right part. That picture was taken by myself, and the shard is one of the 47 Jun shards of the Chinese Museum of Parma that I individually photographed for the e-book in CD format “Jun shards in the Collection of the Chinese Museum of Parma”. The e-book has born under my initiative, and made it possible thanks to the work of the software designer R. Enseki-Hancock and a prominent Scholar, Dr Sabrina Rastelli, Associate Professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, and PhD in Chinese Art and Archaeology from the SOAS, University of London. Sabrina Rastelli participated in excavation campaigns of the Jun kilns sites. Thanks to her, this e-book is at the date the most updated work about Jun ware, that in fact is still matter of discussion and study among Scholars. To whom is interested, the e-book, if still available, can be ordered at the Museum through this link:
https://museocineseparma.org/en/pubblicazioni/books/178-jun-ware
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