Jun ware
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.
[2] 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.
[3] 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.
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.
There is no mention of the kilns of Jun ware in written sources from the Song to Yuan dynasties.
[19] Investigations of Jun ware kiln sites began in 1951 under Chen Wanli of the Palace Museum.
[22] A variety of simple shapes are made, the range mostly similar to that of the very differently decorated Cizhou ware.
Most are natural wheel-formed bowls and dishes, and small vases or wine-carafes, mostly with a narrow neck, but some meipings.
[24] The flower-like ("foliated") rims found in official Jun began in some Song pieces, and echoed contemporary styles in metalwork and lacquer.
The streaked pieces are "all of shapes designed for the growing or display of flowers", according to Shelagh Vainker,[26] though other functions are sometimes suggested, giving alternatives such as spitoon/flower-pots, brush-washer/flower pot stand/bulb planters, and so on.
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).
[36] Sherds of these have been excavated at the kiln site at Juntai, Yixian,[37] 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.
It is often very thin or absent around the rim, but thick at the foot, where it typically leaves a small part uncovered.
The purple areas are caused by the addition of a solution including copper splashed or painted onto the body between glazing and firing.
[40] Some blue or green comes from iron oxide in the glaze, combined with firing in a reducing atmosphere.
[41] At high temperature the glaze produced "spontaneous unmixing ... into silica-rich and lime-rich glasses", which through phase separation gives an opalescent final appearance:[42] "The tiny spherules of lime-rich glass scatter blue light, producing a strong bluish cast".
[56] A set of panels in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore shows the prestige of Jun ware among Chinese collectors under the Qing.
Sherds of purple-splashed Jun ware were framed and mounted in a set of four custom-made wooden panels of the 18th or 19th century, seen through individually shaped windows.
