When making porcelain, glaze has always been the most important key point. Not to mention that pastel involves many colors, it is just a simple blue and white. If your blue and white material is not good enough, can you see the hair color?
Therefore, it is very difficult to make a piece of pastel zhadao porcelain. The first difficulty is the glaze.
Regardless of the quality of the glaze, even if you have a good glaze, you still need to mix it to achieve a good effect. The last thing is the layout, which is also a key point.
Generally, after the background color of pastel-colored zhaodao porcelain is prepared, extremely fine patterns are carved on the "brocade ground" with a tool shaped like a rusty flower needle. This is the complete pattern.
Among them, phoenix tail lines are the most common and typical.
What Zhang Gu just made is the simplest pastel flower goblet with brocade ground and phoenix tail pattern.
What Chen Wenzhe is doing now is naturally not that simple.
The craft of peeling flowers is said to be very simple, but there are many difficulties in making it.
First of all, embroidery requires extremely high skills of the porcelain maker, because the embroidery process involves using an embroidery needle to carve patterns on semi-dry glaze.
During the production process, no drafts are allowed.
It must be done in one go from the beginning to the end, and the patterns and patterns must be of the same size and evenly laid out. There cannot be any mistakes, otherwise all the previous efforts will be wasted and irreversible destruction will result.
Therefore, the craft of peeling flowers extremely tests the technical level and mentality of the craftsmen.
Because the pattern is fully decorated, the patterns are small.
For craftsmen, it is a repetitive, boring and meticulous hard work.
It takes a lot of attention and attention, but also requires concentration, mind and hand, without any confusion.
A small mistake may ruin the beauty of the entire object.
For example, if a needle is slightly heavier, it may cause local small pieces of glaze to peel off after firing.
For the stripping process, this means total failure.
Among them, you need to have fine carving skills, have a big picture view, be able to design, and finally you need to have achievements in painting, knitting, etc.
It can be said that this is a master of basic craftsmanship.
If you want to complete a piece of pastel colored porcelain, porcelain making, carving, knitting, painting and other skills all need to be planned, and you also need the mind, the eye and the hand, the three are in harmony, and the palm of the hand is the same.
work.
Because of this difficulty, this craft was once close to being lost.
Therefore, after seeing Zhang Gu using this craft and making a piece of pastel zhadao porcelain with relatively simple decoration, he was so surprised and met Lie Xinxi!
It is definitely not easy to know this kind of craft and still be able to successfully achieve this level.
Although it has not yet been fired in the kiln, Chen Wenzhe knows that there is a possibility of failure in the kiln firing, but it is not likely.
Even if the possibility of firing failure is high, if you make a few more pieces, you can always fire a few successfully.
And as long as there are successful works, you will never lose money.
Chen Wenzhe looked at Zhang Gu with strange eyes. Why didn't he show his ability?
No matter how simple the pastel zadao porcelain is, it is still a wonderful flower. As long as the work is generally good, there is absolutely no need to follow him for a living.
Is it still because of the colored materials? Chen Wenzhe looked at the glaze he prepared.
I don’t want to make high-quality imitations, I just need beautiful porcelain. Is it okay to use glazes like these?
"Who did you learn this from?" Chen Wenzhe finally couldn't help but ask.
Zhang Gu was stunned and immediately explained: "My family is from Jingzhen, so I also applied for an art college when I went to school!"
Chen Wenzhe immediately understood that his family had a long history, so no wonder he knew so much about the flower gu of the third generation of the Qing Dynasty.
Since it is a family tradition, it is not too strange to make pastel Zadao porcelain.
"Your family's inheritance? Practice hard, this skill is not easy!" Chen Wenzhe reminded.
Zhang Gu shook his head directly: "I only learned a little bit about it. I taught myself by reading books. No one in my family has been involved in porcelain work for decades."
Chen Wenzhe is a little helpless. This is the situation of various skills in modern times, and they are all facing the risk of being lost.
Just by looking at Zhang Gu's current craftsmanship, you can tell that his family's inheritance is definitely not simple. However, this kind of craftsmanship has been lost for decades.
Zhang Gu was able to learn the craftsmanship of pastel zhadao porcelain by himself. He must have put in a lot of effort and his talent must be very good.
"Except for a few masters in China, there are not many people who can do this craft well. You can focus on practicing, and you might become a master in this field." Chen Wenzhe reminded again.
"I don't have money. If you want to learn this kind of craft, you must have money, so let's make some money first!"
Zhang Gu smiled bitterly, "You need to have the capital to practice this kind of skill. Not to mention anything else, just the materials he is using now, how much does one cost?"
The most important thing is that the success rate of making this kind of porcelain is really low. Even if his family has a small amount of assets, they can't afford him to spend so much money.
This is the reason why this craft is facing extinction.
Chen Wenzhe also knows that firing this kind of porcelain really requires resources, even capital or national power.
Let’s not talk about anything else, let’s just talk about the Qing Dynasty. Except for the third generation of the Qing Dynasty, starting from Emperor Jiaqing, the national power declined. After Xianfeng, no pastel rolled porcelain was fired again, so that the craft of stripping was lost for more than 100 years!
This is a country. Just because the country is weak, this kind of porcelain cannot be fired. What about individuals?
Nowadays, due to the complexity of the flower-making process, it is impossible to master this process without many years of art skills and solid craftsmanship.
Therefore, there are very few artists of the younger generation who have learned and trained as craftsmen, resulting in the fact that the art of paihua is faced with the situation of no one to inherit it.
There are few people who know how to do it, and not many have been handed down from ancient times, which leads to the increasing value of the flower-making craft.
Over the years, pastel rolled porcelain has been favored by people, and the market price has increased year by year.
As long as it is valuable, someone will study it, and only if this craft can make money, will someone learn it.
In 2011, the long-necked gourd vase with a light yellow ground color and a "Longevity" painting from the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty was sold for more than HK$250 million, which directly stimulated the market!
Therefore, in recent years, pastel zhaodao porcelain has seen a situation where a hundred flowers are blooming.
It's just that making this kind of porcelain can make money, but it has entry barriers.
The production process of patterned porcelain is very complicated and requires extremely high craftsmanship. Ordinary folk kilns and folk artists simply do not have the manpower and financial resources to produce and operate it.
This has resulted in the treasures of carved porcelain being hard to find in the market, and their collection value has gradually increased!
"Then let's make some money today and make antique porcelain?"
Chen Wenzhe looked at Zhang Gu. He didn't know if Zhang Gu had any moral disorder!
Zhang Gu glanced at the high-imitation Ru kiln porcelain that was drying not far away. Is this still a question?
He didn't have the money to practice the stunts inherited from his family. Now that he has the opportunity, will he not cherish it?
Now he has gone abroad, for what purpose? As long as he can learn some skills, he can do anything!
Besides, it doesn’t seem to be illegal to make high imitations, right?