Fragment from base of bowl

Shape: This shard consists of the footring and mirror of a bowl. Wheel-thrown.
Clay: The stoneware body is gray internally and has burned red where it was exposed to the kiln atmosphere. The bottom of the base has a scar of a tubular firing support. The gray stoneware body is very fine-grained with a low proportion of fine black inclusions. One fracture line reveals a large air pocket which may have caused the body to break. Other, smaller air pockets are also observed.
Glaze: Pale celadon glaze over underglaze iron-black decoration.
Decoration: The underglaze decoration of the bowl is painted on a light gray slip and is of a conch shell overlaid on a background of cross-hatched lines surrounded by concentric circles. These circles appear to have been painted by moving a semi-stationary brush outward while the bowl revolved on the wheel. The conch shell against a cross-hatched background motif appears to have been modelled on Chinese prototypes. The outside of the footring also has an iron-black ring painted around it and is only partially covered by the pale celadon glaze. The combination of the gray slip and an almost clear celadon glaze produced a black-on-gray color scheme for the finished bowl.