Yuan dynasty AD1279-1368

Bowl with sky-blue glaze and purple splashes, Jun ware

This deep-walled water jar with a wide inward mouth has a slightly flaring lower body that constricts to form a small base, the center of which has a sharp protruding point. It is covered with sky-blue glaze and a linear crackle pattern. The thick glaze color inside is dark, while the three-pronged support markings inside show where the glaze thickened around the spurs, which when removed left places where the brown body can still be seen. The exterior walls of the vessel are covered with purple splotches on the middle and lower parts down to the base, the purple covering and mixed with sky blue glaze to create a hazy wash effect. The coloring is clear and bright, making this a masterpiece of glaze color mixing from the Jun kilns. The thinness of the glaze at the rim makes for its brownish yellow color from the body, also revealed at the base, the inside of which is glazed. Compared to other Jun water jars with a stout body and small mouth, the diameter here is wider and the vessel taller, being closer in appearance to a jar found at the Yingli site in Yuzhou, Henan. The glaze color is also similar, suggesting that this work dates to the Jin dynasty. Northern kilns in the Yuan and Ming dynasties often placed three-pronged supports inside vessels so that smaller items could be stacked inside during the firing process, with those at Baofeng and Guantai in Henan all revealing this phenomenon.