Tea Bowl with Russet Hare's Fur Markings

The small, circular foot and lightly indented, vertical lip of this large yankou wan, or funnel-shaped bowl, are connected by steeply sloping walls that show a well defined, angular cut approximately three quarters of an inch above the foot. Thin at the lip, the walls thicken as they descend, the added weight at the bottom lending stability to the bowl. The short foot is of standard Jian type, with a flat bottom and straight walls of intermediate thickness; also standard is the flat, exceptionally shallow base. Appearing bluish black, a deep brown glaze covers the bowl, stopping in a thick welt at the angle above the foot. Because the molten glaze crawled downward in firing, the lip is unglazed. A subtle pattern of russet hare's-fur streaks enlivens the glaze inside and out, visible more on the upper than on the lower portion of the bowl. The bowl was wheel thrown, its foot and base shaped with a knife. After it had dried, the bowl was dipped in the glaze slurry; following a second period of drying, the bowl's lip was immersed in the iron-laden slip. The bowl was fired right side up, seated in its saggar on a small biscuit-shaped clay cushion. The slip not only caused hare's-fur markings to form where it settled on the glaze surface, but caused the exposed body clay at the lip to fire rust brown; by contrast, the body clay on the bowl's unglazed, unslipped lower portion fired a deep purplish brown. It is often said that yankou wan bowls were created with steeply pitched walls to make them easy to hold when drinking tea; it is also often said that they were given indented rims to make them comfortable for drinking, the indentation nicely accommodating lips and index fingers alike. In fact, recent research in Northern Song texts on tea suggests that the bowls owe their distinctive shape to the need for a deep bowl in which tea-competition contestants could prepare whipped tea.