Ru ware bowl
The rarest Chinese ceramic: a simple bowl with blue-green glaze and fine crackle.
The Ru kilns made ware for the emperor for only about twenty years around 1100. Fewer than a hundred pieces survive today. Examples are in the National Palace Museum in Taipei and the Percival David Collection at the British Museum.
Materials: Stoneware with blue-green celadon glaze
Manufacture: The glaze contained crushed agate; the bowl was fired on tiny spurs so that even the foot was glazed.
The soft pale blue-green glaze with a net of fine cracks.
Three or five tiny spur marks under the foot, like sesame seeds.