The appearance of a fine piece of Ru porcelain allowed Chen Wenzhe to know how the Ru kiln porcelain was fired through retrospection.
Among them, he also saw the firing process and effects of authentic Ru kiln porcelain in history.
In particular, you can see the porcelain-making craftsmanship of Yan He, a top Ru porcelain master, which made Chen Wenzhe understand many skills, and even more skills can be learned by analogy.
He stands on the foundation of thousands of years of cultural accumulation, and naturally understands it more thoroughly than Yan He.
The ancients did not know the nature of glass and agate, but they must have figured out the similarities between the two.
They don't know what silica is, but they definitely know the difference between bauxite and iron soil.
Chen Wenzhe is different. After seeing ancient craftsmanship, he knows why the ideal firing effect can be achieved.
With the foundation of modern science and technology, Chen Wenzhe sees things more thoroughly than the ancients.
For example, Ru porcelain is glazed with agate, which not only lowers the firing temperature and controls the kiln temperature to 1180-1280 degrees, but also restricts the depth of the body color. More importantly, this temperature promotes the crystallization of Ru porcelain glaze - phase separation glaze.
of success.
The so-called crystallization actually controls the temperature in the kiln to promote the continuous movement of crystal molecules in the matrix and glaze, rolling from bottom to top, so that the crystal shape changes from "dots" to "flowers".
This process is exactly the same as the formation law of the texture of famous natural stones.
The occurrence of this characteristic will make the layering of enamel very rich and varied, and distributed randomly.
This is indistinguishable from natural jade, which is why Ru porcelain is "like jade but not jade, but better than jade".
To sum up, the main reasons for adding agate to the glaze are, first, to obtain the azure color, second, to reduce the degree of vitrification of the glaze, and third, to promote phase separation—the success of the crystallized glaze is to enhance the jade quality of your porcelain.
texture.
Of course, the formation of the azure color of your porcelain is not only caused by the inclusion of agate in the glaze.
The combination of raw materials, firing process, and agate glaze, etc., every step is an indispensable condition for firing an authentic Ru porcelain.
“The craftsmen who can make the highest quality Ru kiln porcelain are truly well-deserved!”
After reading Yan He's views on agate glazing and watching his process of firing Ru kiln porcelain, Chen Wenzhe was quite impressed.
The ancients did not understand science and technology, but they were able to clearly study various chemical changes and the ratios of various raw materials through long-term production practice. The difficulty of this is certainly not something modern people can imagine.
Of course, the reason why Chen Wenzhe could understand it at a glance was definitely not his fault. It was definitely based on modern academic research.
If he can learn the craftsmanship of the ancients by looking at it, he must have a foundation, and this foundation is very solid.
Because he knew very well that since the Republic of China, some people with lofty ideals had begun to conduct scientific research on porcelain.
During the Republic of China, Mr. Zhou Ren began to conduct research on traditional Chinese ceramic technology and published the "Ceramic Experimental Field Work Report".
This report conducted a comprehensive study on many issues such as porcelain raw materials, blanks, glazes, molding, painting, and firing in the test site, and pioneered the introduction of chemical means into the research of porcelain making processes.
After the founding of New China, the research on the porcelain making technology of Ru Kiln gradually deepened.
It was on the basis of all these that Chen Wenzhe was able to successfully learn the unique skills of the ancients.
It is a pity that a book on making Ru porcelain has been lost.
Up to now, although there are many ancient documents about Ru kiln porcelain making technology, the overall process of Ru kiln porcelain making technology has not been recorded.
The raw materials, molding, firing and other technological aspects of Ru kiln are hard to find in ancient documents.
And Yan He's book records it in too detail.
Previously, he wanted to imitate the Northern Song Dynasty Ru kiln, so he specially classified it into six main features.
It is obvious that he did not know that if you want to make a Ru kiln, you must have the four characteristics of Ru porcelain firing techniques, which can also be called the "four unique skills of making".
The first is the exquisite ingredients. Ru porcelain is very rigorous in the selection of materials from base material to glaze.
It must be kaolin, agate stone, golden soil, black soil and other raw materials within a certain range of the local area.
The second is the unique discoloration. Ru porcelain adopts the unique stack-firing technique of supporting pins and supporting the firing.
Full glaze is fired, and the glaze changes on the surface of the vessel in the kiln are observed through the fire.
Control the temperature in the kiln according to the kiln changes, thereby controlling the glaze color changes of the products.
This is a unique technique in the firing process of Ru porcelain, and it is also the core feature of Ruzhou Ru porcelain firing technology.
This technique depends entirely on the observation and understanding of the kiln technicians, and there is no specific and unified quantitative index.
The third is the absence of cracks. Generally, the glaze of porcelain has straight cracks, but the glaze of your porcelain has diagonal cracks, shaped like fly wings or cicada wings.
It is precisely through the precise control of temperature by craftsmen that we can obtain the exquisite Ru porcelain with crab claw patterns, pear skin patterns, caviar patterns and ice cracks.
The fourth is to respond to light. Ru porcelain products fired using traditional Ru porcelain firing techniques will show different colors and tones depending on the intensity of light.
Depending on whether the sky is sunny or cloudy, the color will show obvious differences.
Moreover, the tiny bubbles accumulated under the glaze will appear like stars in the sky when viewed under a microscope.
As long as you have these four skills, the firing of Ru kiln porcelain can begin.
Of course, the process flow must be sorted out before.
In particular, the selection of raw materials is even more important when firing Ru porcelain.
I won’t talk about anything else, just the most basic black soil.
This is a kind of soil, but it is not ordinary, because it is an important material for making porcelain.
It turns out that Chen Wenzhe really didn’t know that black soil was also used in firing Ru kiln porcelain.
Now that he knows, he can buy some, and he knows exactly where to buy them.
Chen Wenzhe usually pays special attention to any information related to porcelain clay.
Besides, he also has master-level clay training skills, and through the inheritance of clay figurine Zhang, he also learned a lot of skills in processing stale clay.
Therefore, when learning how to make Ru porcelain, it is not a piece of cake to prepare the clay.
Still talking about this kind of black soil, Chen Wenzhe has seen news about this before.
There are many places where black soil comes from, but there are not many black soils of truly good quality.
Still in Ruzhou, a villager reported to the village official that the "black soil" used to make ceramics was stolen, and the party who robbed it responded that it was to clean up the sludge!
Black soil is a kind of dark soil, which is a type of kaolin clay.
Villagers in the origin of this black soil reported with real names that village committee cadres "collaborated" with the construction team that filled the soil, stealing "black soil" that can be used to make high-end ceramics at night.
Dozens of villagers "caught" a dump truck preparing to transport "black soil" at the construction site.
Later, the land and resources department intervened in the investigation and ordered the construction team to prohibit the excavated soil from being transported out of the construction site.
The village committee and the construction team involved at the time responded that they did not know it was valuable "black soil" and they were just clearing the silt from the construction site normally.