Small Ovoid Jar with Partridge-Feather Mottles

This ovoid jar sports a lustrous black glaze enlivened with russet splashes. Of thinly potted form, the jar is surmounted by a short, upright neck with an unglazed rim around the wide mouth. (The unglazed lip indicates that the jar originally had a cover, now lost, which would have been fired in place.) The jar is covered inside and out with a lustrous, dark brown glaze that appears black in reflected light. Randomly applied splashes of matte russet-brown slip enliven the dark glaze, the splashes running downward and shading to iridescent green tones at the margins; since Song times, Chinese connoisseurs have termed the type of mottles that embellish this piece "partridge feather decoration." The well-controlled glaze ends in an even line well short of the high, lightly splayed foot, exposing the light gray stoneware body on the lower portion of the piece; the exposed body clay assumed a pale buff skin in firing.