A JIAN 'HARE'S FUR' TEA BOWL, China, Southern Song dynasty, the deep, rounded sides are covered inside and out with a thick, lustrous brown glaze finely streaked with black-brown 'hare's fur' markings thinning to a matte dark russet-brown at the rim and pooling in a line above the neatly cut foot to reveal the buff ware fired to a dark purplish-brown color - Property from an old South German private collection, acquired from the art dealer Anne Roselt in Cologne on 16th Nov. 1981. - Jian tea bowls were held in high esteem by Song scholar-official class and even the emperors. Cai Xiang (1012-1067), the famous calligrapher and high official in the Northern Song court designated the 'hare's fur' tea bowls from Jian'an the most appropriate utensil in serving tea in his two-chapter treatise on tea entitled Cha lu (A Record of Tea). He believed the white tea looked best in black-glazed bowls and the slightly thicker wall of Jian wares help to retain the heat of tea. By the early twelfth century, the connoisseurship of Jian tea bowls were further developed by the Emepror Huizong (1082-1135). In his twenty chapter treatise on tea, Daguan chalun (A Discourse on Tea in the Daguan Era) of 1107, the Huizong emperor commented that "the desirable colour of a tea bowl is bluish black and the best examples display clearly streaked hairs." - Good condition