When a kiln turns into porcelain, it can be said that success or failure depends entirely on fire.
The success of glazing in a high-temperature kiln depends entirely on your skill and glazing skills, as well as your mastery of glaze properties, as well as the thickness of the glaze applied, and so on.
Chen Wenzhe has clearly studied various technical difficulties, but even so, if he wants to fire some special kiln glazes, he also needs to rely on luck.
Chen Wenzhe doesn't want to touch the ethereal existence of luck.
Therefore, he planned to make something he could master, such as Lang Kiln Red, Lang Kiln Green, Apple Green Glaze, and Apple Green Glaze.
These are also kiln-glazed porcelain, but he was able to obtain perfect works by controlling the firing technique.
If you want to successfully fire these two simplest types of kiln-glazed porcelain, you must first fire the cowpea red porcelain and Lang kiln red porcelain.
Cowpea red is one of the copper red high-temperature glazes. It is a copper red glaze variety that appeared in the late Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty.
It is named for its elegant and pleasant color tone, uneven pink color, like red cowpea, and light and beautiful shape.
Because of its light red and delicate face, which looks like a child's face, like peach blossoms in March, it is also known as "baby face", "peach blossom slice", and "beauty drunk".
The cowpea red enamel is very even and delicate, containing powder.
The red glaze is often dotted with natural green moss spots formed due to different oxidation and reduction during firing.
The glaze color can be divided into upper and lower grades. The superior one is called "Dahongpao" or "Zhenghong". The glaze color is bright and bright, the whole body is one color, clean and flawless.
In the middle, the glaze is like cowpea skin, with spots of different shades, which is very soft and pleasing to the eye.
Some vessels or rims have green moss spots showing "beautiful imperfections", which are now called "Beauty Zui" or "Beauty Ji".
The lighter colors are called "baby face" or "peach blossom slices". Although they are not as beautiful as the darker ones, they are elegant and delicate.
The lower-grade ones are either lighter in color or darker and turbid, and are called "suckling rat skin" or "elm bark".
As for the vessel whose body is unevenly gray and black in color, "donkey liver, horse lung", and the lower part of which is black glaze and has burnt bubbles, these are the worst quality products.
Cowpea red has no large utensils and is commonly used as study utensils, such as Taibai Zun (water bowl), pomegranate Zun, chrysanthemum petal vase, willow leaf vase, wash box, printing box, etc.
These utensils are special in shape and are more difficult to make than bowls and plates. It turns out that Chen Wenzhe has never made a few of them.
Now that he does it, he still feels very novel.
Especially pomegranate statues, chrysanthemum petal vases, and willow leaf vases. These types of vessels are rare and he has never made them.
This time, the speed of doing it is slower. From clay making to drawing embryo, it needs to be dried, then the embryo needs to be dried, and then it needs to be dried again.
After a step-by-step process, only if the embryo is qualified can it be carved, glazed, and finally fired.
Of course, if you want apple green, you must first know how to cook cowpea red.
It is also very difficult to bake cowpea red.
In ancient times, it could only be produced in small quantities by official kilns and was only used by the royal family.
This is not because the ancients did not want to burn more, but it is really difficult.
It’s hard to make a pot of cowpea red in a millennium. This is really not nonsense.
Even in Jingzhen, there is a local proverb in Jingzhen: "If you want to be poor, burn it red." It means that high-temperature red glaze is difficult to burn, and it is so difficult that it can make you poor?
If you ask: What is the most difficult thing to burn among ceramics? The answer is: high-temperature red glazed porcelain.
my country's high-temperature "copper red" glazed porcelain appeared in the Tang and Song Dynasties.
Since the Yuan Dynasty, single-color pure red glaze porcelain has been created and fired, and it became a variety for palace display, appreciation and play at that time.
However, the varieties fired at that time were all black, and the firing technology was not very mature.
It was not until the Ming Dynasty that the glaze was successfully fired. The "ruby red" of the Yongle and Xuande dynasties in the Ming Dynasty, the "cowpea red" and "Langyao red" of the Kangxi dynasty of the Qing Dynasty were brightly colored and unique, and highly praised by people. Among them, cowpea red was the most popular.
Expensive.
my country’s first cowpea red was actually an unexpected failure.
Because the temperature of the kiln was not well controlled, the red cowpea color appeared in the work.
But this unexpected work actually has an incomparable beauty of flaws.
The red is so cute and so mesmerizing that it has surpassed the beauty that words can express. Instead, it has become a rare and excellent work in the history of Chinese ceramics.
According to historical records, Emperor Kangxi, who loved single-color glaze, was extremely fond of cowpea red glaze.
However, with the level of science and technology three hundred years ago, we did not know the rules of copper ion reduction during the generation of cowpea red glaze.
Therefore, every firing must be carried out regardless of cost.
At that time, a lot of manpower, material resources, and financial resources were used, and precious raw materials such as Western rubies, red corals, agate, etc. were not hesitated to be mixed into the glaze.
The burnability rate is still very low, that is, individual variations are an accidental phenomenon.
After Kangxi, the baking recipe was lost
The cowpea red that was re-fired during the Guangxu period no longer had the style of the imperial kilns in the Kangxi period, and the carcass was relatively thicker.
After Guangxu, the recipe was lost again.
Therefore, the number of whole cowpea red utensils handed down from generation to generation is very small, and it has always been the target of collectors.
Nowadays, there is a popular saying among the people that "if you collect cowpea red, you will be rich all your life".
At the beginning of the last century, most of the cowpea red porcelain was dispersed abroad and collected in famous museums and collectors around the world.
According to statistics, the Metropolitan Museum of Art alone has more than 100 pieces in its collection, which is more than the collections of all domestic museums combined, while the Capital Museum only has one complete piece.
There are no large pieces of cowpea red utensils handed down from generation to generation. Perhaps they were made by porcelain craftsmen of the Kangxi Dynasty. Considering that the cowpea red glaze matches the exquisite and small utensils, it can better highlight its delicate beauty!
There are eight common shapes of vessels: Taibai vase, chrysanthemum petal vase, willow leaf vase, Laifu vase, convex panchi vase, ink pad box, boring gong wash, and apple vase, generally no more than 24 cm high.
During the Kangxi period, the Ji red glaze, cowpea red glaze and Lang kiln red glaze porcelain fired by JDZ kiln were like the three wonders among the high temperature copper red glaze porcelain.
If the red glaze porcelain of Lang Kiln brings people a dazzling glaze color, and the Ji red glaze porcelain brings a deep and stable beauty, then the cowpea red glaze porcelain makes people feel double with its graceful and magical color.
It's pleasing to the eye.
For the first imitation of this kind of top-grade porcelain, Chen Wenzhe must imitate all the types. Fortunately, there are only eight classic types of porcelain, so it is not too troublesome to make.
As for whether it can be successful after firing, Chen Wenzhe actually has great advantages compared to the ancients.
By controlling copper, that is, using an appropriate amount of copper, you can get perfect cowpea red porcelain.
The ancients didn't understand this, but Chen Wenzhe understood it very well.
He has fired too many copper-red glaze porcelains, and even the more difficult-to-control blue and white glaze with red underglaze can be successfully fired, let alone the single-color copper-red glaze.
Even so, Chen Wenzhe only started to imitate some high-quality products after he made a batch of simple cowpea red porcelain and successfully tried it.
There is nothing that can be done about this. After all, the raw materials used in ancient and modern times are different, so Chen Wenzhe must be careful.
In this way, if there is a problem with the raw materials and the firing fails, he will not waste much time.