dish BM-1936-1012.88

Period:Ming dynasty Production date:1400-1435
Materials:porcelain
Technique:glazed

Dimensions:Diameter: 17.50 centimetres Height: 5 centimetres

Description:
Dish with ‘jun’ lavender-purple glaze. This thickly potted porcelain dish has rounded sides and an everted rim and stands on a broad foot ring. The base is unglazed but treated with an iron-brown coating. Inside and out it is covered with a ‘jun’-style lavender-purple glaze flecked over shades of blue. The glaze has crept away from the rim which has fired greenish brown.
IMG


Comments:Harrison-Hall 2001:This dish was exhibited in 1913 at the City Art Gallery, Manchester.Linru on the Ru River in Henan was the main production centre for jun wares in the Song dynasty. ‘Jun’ wares were then counted among the Five Great Wares by connoisseurs. ‘Jun’ wares, mostly bowls, dishes and jars, but also bulb bowls, incense burners, meiping and bottles, were thickly potted and thickly glazed. They are particularly appealing and were made in lavender blue, purple, purple-splashed blue and green. The blue colour is achieved by an unmixing of the glaze into silica-rich and lime-rich glasses at high temperatures while the purple colour results from extra copper ore painted on to the glazed but unfired vessel. Such colours inspired European studio potters, like Bernard Leach, to experiment with Chinese glazes.The shape of the present dish is very similar to Ming dynasty saucer dishes produced at Jingdezhen from the Chenghua to Wanli reign. Song-style glazes were much appreciated in the Ming era and copies of ‘Longquan’, ‘guan’, ‘ge’, ‘ru’ and ‘ding’ were all made at Jingdezhen. Imitation ‘jun’ wares were made more frequently there in the eighteenth century.Harrison-Hall 2009Following recent excavations in China it is now more likely that instead of Chenghua period this dish dates to the early 15th century and was made not at Jingdezhen but at Juntai in Henan province. See (Li Baoping, ‘Numbered Jun Wares: Controversies and New Kiln Site Discoveries, in Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, vol. 71, 2006-2007, pp. 65-77)