Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

The Ru kilns at Qingliangsi in Baofeng, Henan province made the finest green-glazed stonewares for the Northern Song court (AD 960–1127), but for only some twenty years. Ru ware is therefore China’s rarest and most highly appreciated ceramic ware, and has been collected and copied for as long as it existed. Its particular qualities are its fine, even potting with thin walls, its superb jade-like, bluish-green glaze, often with a highly attractive crackle, and the firing method of supporting the pieces in the kiln on tiny spurs. This allowed the vessels to be fully glazed, thus avoiding the roughness of an unglazed foot, leaving tiny, neat ‘sesame-seed’ marks on the base instead.

The piece has low rounded sides and a thin, outward curved foot. It is fully covered with a very smooth, tactile, opaque blue-green glaze with a pleasing crackle, which in places forms an intensely blue-green glassy layer. The glaze has some pin pricks and the rim has a gilt-lacquer repair. The base shows three minute ‘sesame seed’ spur marks, radiatingly arranged, revealing a near-white clay.