A BLACK-GLAZED AND RUSSET VASE JIN DYNASTY

the body of elegant pear shape rising from a short spreading foot to a tall flaring neck with a rolled rim, covered overall with a rich lustrous brown-black glaze stopping just above the base, freely painted in russet with three large stylized birds

Zhongguo taoci jingpin zhan [The Exhibition of Chinese Ceramics of Eight Dynasties], National Museum of History, Taipei, 1987, p. 40.

See a related pear-shaped vase in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, published in Robert D. Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers. Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1995, no 52, where the author suggests that these bottles with this type of decoration only appeared in the Jin period, and therefore a Northern Song date is unlikely for dark-glazed bottles with painted decoration.