A DARK-BROWN-GLAZED RIBBED EWER
Five Dynasties/Northern Song dynasty, 10th century
Handsomely modeled with an elongated body, tall neck and everted rim, covered inside and out a luxurious dark-brown glaze pulling thin to light brown at sharp corners, the vessel decorated with six sets of vertical 'ribs', the handle attached to the side of the neck tapering down to the shoulder opposite to the long spout, the vessel resting on a short splayed foot, the base neatly pared and glazed, showing buff stoneware body under the foot ring.
9 1/4in (23.9cm) high
Footnotes:
五代或北宋 黑褐釉執壺

It is very rare to find an ewer of this 'transitional' form. Ewers of this type were modeled after metal wares from Central Asia as early as the 6th century. The neck and the long spout on present example are typical features of a 10th century production, a departure from the short neck and short spout in the Tang. The elegant proportion and refined glaze signifies the beauty and aesthetics that later became a signature style of the Song.

Compare a closely related dark-brown-glazed ewer from the Scheinman Collection, now in the Harvard Art Museums, illustrated by R. Mowry, Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 128-129, no. 28, described by the author as Northern black ware of Cizhou type, 10th-11th century. Mowry also noted: 'The spouts on such tenth- and eleventh-century ewers typically spring from the shoulder rather than from the body, and are curved, and longer than those of Tang-period examples... The cylindrical shape, the long curving spout, and the arched handle joined to the neck suggest that the ewer could have been made as early as the tenth century, ...'