Jun ware () is a type of Chinese pottery, one of the Five Great Kilns of Song dynasty ceramics. Despite its fame, much about Jun ware remains unclear, and the subject of arguments among experts. Several different types of pottery are covered by the term, produced over several centuries and in several places, during the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), Jin dynasty (1115–1234) and Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), and (as has become clearer in recent years) lasting into the early Ming dynasty (1368–1644).Vainker, 104; Ming, 92–97
Some of the wares were for a popular market, especially the drinking vessels, but others seem to have been made for the imperial court and are known as "official Jun wares"; they are not mentioned in contemporary documents and their dating remains somewhat controversial. These are mostly bowls for growing bulbs or flower-pots with matching stands, such as can be seen in many paintings of scenes in imperial palaces.Vainker, 102–104 The consensus that seems to be emerging, driven largely by the interpretation of excavations at kiln sites, divides Jun wares into two groups: a large group of relatively popular wares made in simple shapes from the Northern Song to (at lower quality) the Yuan, and a much rarer group of official Jun wares made at a single site (Juntai) for the imperial palaces in the Yuan and early Ming periods.Medley, 118–122; Vainker, 102–104 Both types rely largely for their effect on their use of the blue and purple glaze colours; the latter group are sturdy shapes for relatively low-status uses such as flowerpots and perhaps spitoons.See note on the spitoon or flower pot illustrated.
The most striking and distinctive Jun wares use blue to purple glaze colours, sometimes suffused with white, made with straw ash in the glaze.Medley, 118 They often show "splashes" of purple on blue, sometimes appearing as though random, though they are usually planned. A different group are "streaked" purple on blue,Vainker, 102 the Chinese describing the streaks as "worm-tracks". This is a high-prestige stoneware which was greatly admired and often imitated in later periods. But colours range from a light greenish-brown through green to blue and purple. The shapes are mostly simple, except for the official wares, and other decoration is normally limited to the glaze effects. Most often, the "unofficial" wares are wheel-thrown, but the official ones moulded.
The wares are stoneware in terms of Western classification, and "high-fired" or porcelain in Chinese terms (where the class of stoneware is not generally recognised). Like the still more prestigious Ru ware, they are often not quite fired as high as the normal stoneware temperature range, and the body remains permeable to water.Medley, 118, 122 They form a "close relative" of the wider group of Northern celadons or greenwares.
History
The start date for Jun ware is uncertain; many pieces are dated to the Song dynasty mainly through the similarity of their shapes to those of other Song wares. No Jun ware has yet been recovered from tombs that can be firmly dated to the Song.Koh The two main sites with kilns producing Jun ware are close to Yuzhou, Henan and in Linru County in Henan though, at least by the Yuan, there were many others, explaining the many differences between examples.Vainker, 101–102; Medley, 118; Grove As with other wares, excavations at kiln sites in recent decades have shown that other types of pottery were also made at the same sites. One Jun ware site was Qingliangsi, where imperial Ru ware was also made.Grove
The Chinese character for Jun became incorporated in local place names only as late as 1368. There is no mention of the kilns of Jun ware in written sources from the Song to Yuan dynasties.Vainker, 102; Sato The first mention of the wares is by the painter Song Xu, writing in 1504, in his .Flower-pot stand, PDF.97, British Museum A black ware with spots was produced at the Xiaobai Valley in the Tang dynasty and can be considered the precursor of Jun ware.Shen
It is possible that early pieces in a very light blue are actually the quasi-mythical Chai ware of the 10th century, much praised in early sources, but of which no clear examples matching the early descriptions survive.Rawson, 245; Gompertz, 79–80 describes the references to Chai ware.
The purple colour perhaps does not appear until the early 12th century, and then is only controlled by late in that century. By the late 13th century at least one piece has a character formed in splashes. This is a headrest in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the character for "pillow".Medley, 119; Osborne, 185
The ware experiences a fall in quality into the Jin period, continuing in the Yuan. By the Yuan dynasty, Jun ware production had spread to other kiln sites in Henan, Hebei and Shanxi provinces,Grove; Sato although Yuzhou City was the prime area for Jun ware production. Some fine quality pieces are known, often a good deal larger than previously. Investigations of Jun ware kiln sites began in 1951 under Chen Wanli of the Palace Museum. A hundred kiln sites were subsequently discovered. A major report appeared in the journal Wenwu ("Historical Relics") in 1964.Sato It was excavations at Juntai in 1973–1974 which revealed the site where official Jun was made; it is assumed this was all made there.
Characteristics The Jun glaze included blue-grey, sky-blue, moon-white, red and purple, the most prized have crimson or purple splashes. Varying the temperature of the kilns changed colour tints, a technique known as yaobian.
General Jun ware A variety of simple shapes are made, the range mostly similar to that of the very differently decorated Cizhou ware. Like Cizhou wares, the walls are thick and sturdy. Most are natural wheel-formed bowls and dishes, and small vases or wine-carafes, mostly with a narrow neck, but some meipings. There are also boxes, jars, ewers and other shapes.Vainker, 102; Grove
The foot of the later period ware is usually unglazed and brown; the rim of bowls can also be brown or greenish where the glaze is thinner. Song period examples display a careful finishing with glaze inside the foot. Naturally Song shapes are crisp and thinner than later Jin and Yuan examples. All types are thickly glazed, often with the glaze not reaching the foot of the piece.
The flower-like ("foliated") rims found in official Jun began in some Song pieces, and echoed contemporary styles in metalwork and lacquer.Dish, PDF, A.5, British Museum By the Yuan some shapes, such as vases and circular incense-burners, are given handles.
Vases
Cups
"Official" Jun ware Although Jun ware is not mentioned by on ceramics (or in surviving chronicles), at least the last class mentioned above, of "streaked" purple on blue, appears to have been made for the court, and is known as "official" (guan) Jun ware. The streaked pieces are "all of shapes designed for the growing or display of flowers", according to Shelagh Vainker, though other functions are sometimes suggested, giving alternatives such as spitoon/flower-pots, brush-washer/flower pot stand/bulb planters, and so on. As an example, the pot illustrated in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore is described by them as a "spitoon", but an identical shape in the Percival David Collection is described as a "flower-pot", with an inscribed "6" underneath.PDF.36, British Museum Very similar pots are shown with plants growing in them in a Ming imperial portrait.Ming, 97–98 The Walters are cautious on dating, while the British Museum date their piece to 1403–1435, in the early Ming.
The sizes and shapes differ from the other groups, being generally larger, heavier, and with more complicated shapes, made in double (two-part) moulds in a process apparently invented by the potters of Jun ware.Medley, 118; Ming, 97 Many of the rims are irregular, forming flower-like shapes. There are also incisions on the bases of many pieces, of the characters feng hua, the name of a building in the main Song palace at Kaifeng (in at least one case this is a Qing addition). Other pieces have numbers between one and ten impressed on the base. These may indicate standard sizes to help the palace in ordering, the most likely explanation, or members of matching sets. If the numbers indicate sizes, "1" is the largest and "10" the smallest".Vainker, 102–104; Medley, 121 Such pieces are sometimes called "numbered Jun ware". There are also some simple table shapes made to the same quality, but these are never numbered.Dish, PDF.54, British Museum
There has been a divergence between Asian and Western scholars in dating these; the Chinese, relying largely on evidence from excavations at the Juntai kiln, place them in the late Northern Song, while Western writers put them in the Yuan or early Ming.Vainker, 104; Ming, 92–97; Osborne, 185; see the final section of Koh for more detail. There has been much discussion of a single supposedly Song period coin found in a kiln at Juntai. There seem at the least to have been replacement orders for the new imperial palace in Beijing under the early Ming (Yongle and Xuande Emperors, so 1402–1435), and many pieces are inscribed with locations, probably added in the 18th century, and certainly remained in place in the palace until the late Qing.Ming, 97 Jun flower pots can also be seen in paintings of the court from the Ming. The British Museum dates the official wares "from about AD 1368 to 1435".
Sherds of these have been excavated at the kiln site at Juntai, Yixian,Vainker, 103; the site is: Juntai, Yuxian, Henan province , per British Museum and recently, opinion has been shifting in favour of earlier dating within the Ming (as followed above), and some pieces have been reassigned from being "Jun-type" imitations in Jingdezhen ware, to Jun itself.Compare the "Curator's comments" for this piece in the British Museum, citing: 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 The body material of official Jun ware seems rather different from that of the earlier and more popular pieces.Medley, 121–122
Flat, wide shapes (functions and dates as per the owning museums)
Technical aspects of the glaze and firing
The glaze of Jun ware is always thick and opaque. It is often very thin or absent around the rim, but thick at the foot, where it typically leaves a small part uncovered. Both the light blue and purple colours are first seen in Chinese pottery in Jun wares. The purple areas are caused by the addition of a solution including copper splashed or painted onto the body between glazing and firing.Vainker, 102, 104 Some blue or green comes from iron oxide in the glaze, combined with firing in a reducing atmosphere.Medley, 118–119 At high temperature the glaze produced "spontaneous unmixing ... into silica-rich and lime-rich glasses", which through phase separation gives an opalescent final appearance:Vainker, 104–105 "The tiny spherules of lime-rich glass scatter blue light, producing a strong bluish cast". The fact that particles or inhomogeneities smaller than a light wavelength preferentially scatter blue light is known as Rayleigh scattering.Zhiyan, Li, et al. (2010) Chinese Ceramics, From the paleolithic period through the Qing dynasty. Yale University Press, New Haven & London; Foreign Language Press, Beijing. . The glaze contains large numbers of tiny bubbles, from gases produced in the glaze during firing. These, though invisible to the naked eye, contribute to the visual effect of the pieces.Medley, 119 In many pieces they leave the glaze rather rough to the touch,Rawson, 245 though the finest pieces avoid this, perhaps by grinding the materials very finely. Applying more than one layer of glaze appears to have been common.Osborne, 185