A 'JIZHOU' 'TORTOISESHELL' BOWL, China, Song dynasty, the deep rounded sides rising to a slightly everted rim, covered overall in a dark brownish-black glaze and splashed with caramel-beige tones simulating tortoiseshell, the glaze stopping neatly above the short foot - Property from an old South German private collection, assembled between 1979 and 1992, this bowl was bought from Anne Roselt Cologne, 15.1.1990 - Southern Song potters at Jiangxi province's Jizhou kilns developed this lively dappled glaze to apply to various forms of stoneware cups, bowls, and vases. Known in Chinese and English as 'tortoiseshell' glaze, it is characterized by an overall black-coffee color inflected with creamy tones ranging from deep amber to taupe, as seen on the present bowl. The effect seems to have been created by first dipping the vessel in a medium-brown slip glaze then, following the drying, dipping it in a darker brown glaze slurry, splashing it with a paste of wood or bamboo-ash and water, drying it again, and finally firing it right side up in the saggar. A slightly larger tea bowl in the Simon Kwan Collection was exhibited in Song Ceramics from the Kwan Collection, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1994, cat. no. 170 - Few glaze frits and corossion to mouth rim.