RINCE-PINCEAU EN GRÈS JUNYAO, XI

This well-proportioned washer with its thick, lavender-blue glaze typifies the elegant simplicity of Northern Song and Jin Jun ware. This particular vessel was likely served as a brush washer for the desk of an emperor or high government official.
The most famous similar examples include one in the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection at The Asia Society, New York (1979.138), one in the Sir Herbert Ingram Collection at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University (EA1956.1326), and another in the Sir Percival David Collection now housed at the British Museum, London. A similarly shaped Yaozhou vessel—which has been termed a xi, or brush washer, by the museum curators—and now in the Capital Museum, Beijing, was excavated from a Jin-dynasty tomb in Beijing. A “moon white” Yaozhou vessel, also termed a xi and now in the Yaozhou Kiln Museum, Shaanxi province, was one of the thirty-six, Jin-dynasty, Yaozhou vessels in a cache recovered at Liulinzhen, Yaozhouqu, Tongchuan, Shaanxi province in April 1988.