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I am interested in a white glazed bowl that is said to be from the late Song or early Yuan dynasty i.e. the 13th century. It has a copper rim and a 5/8 inch foot which I think is quite unusal. Do you think this is a genuine piece? (Picture omitted).
It is possibly genuine. This one you have so see to know.
Bowls with high foot like this was made by the millions in Jingdezhen at the time stated, but are for some reason rarely seen. I have three points:
1. All shards I have seen of this type with high foot in (southern) China was fired on a clay wad inside the foot, which left a brown mark almost the size of the base. This bowl lacks this brown mark.
2. This bowl instead seems to have been fired standing upside down on it's rim, since it's rim is clad with a metal band, a perfectly normal feature of Ding (northern) ware.
3. It is technically quite possibly that it could be genuine anyway. It's only that I haven't seen any with this combination before. On the other hand again, there must be millions of pieces I haven't seen.
All in all I can't advise you in any direction. It looks like a nice piece to be close to one thousend years old.
I Enclose a picture from what a few genuine Song/Yuan bowl shards looks like on the ground at one of several kiln sites outside Jingdezhen, so you can judge by yourself. I took the picture in B/W for archival purpose. Sorry about that.
Jan-Erik Nilsson
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