Ru ware

Common card · No. 452921

Ru ware, Ju ware (Chinese: 汝瓷), or "Ru official ware" (Chinese: 汝官瓷) is a famous and extremely rare type of Chinese pottery from the Song dynasty, produced for the imperial court for a brief period around 1100. Fewer than 100 complete pieces survive, though there are later imitations which do not entirely match the originals. Most have a distinctive pale "duck-egg" blue glaze, "the colour of the sky after rain, glimpsed through a parting in the clouds" according to a medieval connoisseur, and are otherwise undecorated, though their colours vary and reach into a celadon green. The shapes include dishes, probably used as brush-washers, cups, wine bottles (carafes in modern terms), small vases, and censers and incense-burners. They can be considered as a particular form of celadon wares. Ru ware represents one of the Five Great Kilns identified by later Chinese writers. The wares were reserved for the Imperial court, with according to one contemporary source only those they rejected reaching...

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