There must be a reason why a newly created porcelain that has been fired for more than two hundred years has become popular all over the world and has become recognized as a world-famous porcelain.
Bone china can be said to be a kind of porcelain that is unexpectedly made as fat as jade.
As for traditional Chinese porcelain, how difficult is it to make it as smooth as fat or jade?
A little bit of bone meal is priced at an exorbitant price.
Just did it directly.
Since bone powder is an ingredient, it can increase the hardness and transmittance of porcelain, and its strength is higher than that of ordinary porcelain. Therefore, it can be made thinner, more transparent, and whiter than ordinary porcelain.
From this, bone china, a new type of porcelain, was born. After such bone china is produced, it is thin, translucent, and has greater toughness.
besides,
Because of the glaze-colored bone china,
The picture is melted into high-temperature transparent glaze, so the picture is not easy to wear or fall off.
This kind of porcelain can directly achieve the effect of being "as thin as paper, as transparent as a mirror, as loud as a chime, and as white as jade" without requiring too much troublesome processes or too high techniques.
With this quality, coupled with the delicate and transparent porcelain, beautiful and elegant shape, moist and bright color surface, and colorful flower surface, it has achieved its white texture and luxurious shape.
Porcelain produced in this way has dual value of use and art, so it is naturally highly sought after by the world.
Compared with various domestic porcelains, most people certainly cannot achieve the level of "thin as paper, as transparent as a mirror, as loud as a chime, and as white as jade".
But making bone china is really not difficult. As long as you understand a few key points, you can make qualified bone china.
Excellent bone china is generally made from feldspar and silicate clay as the main raw materials.
A large amount of beef bone powder containing less impurities is added to form it.
However, since the raw materials contain a large amount of bone powder, which makes the soil less sticky, the shaping process requires extra care.
Especially during the firing process, you must pay attention to a few key items.
First, after forming processing, it is fired at the highest temperature of 1250°C.
During the firing process, due to the very large shrinkage of bone china, the finished product will shrink by 20% after firing in the kiln. Generally, porcelain shrinks by 7%.
Therefore, the shape is easily deformed, and plates, bowls, etc. must be placed on special bowls for long-term baking.
Afterwards, the shape, bending and size inspection are carried out.
After grinding the surface, spray the glaze with a sprayer and put it into the kiln for glaze firing at 1150℃.
Then there is the coloring. The general coloring method is to paste transfer paper on the white texture finished product and bake it at 820°C.
After firing,
Still need to check.
All itineraries are subject to strict inspection.
Only qualified products will be sent to the next trip.
Finally made into a finished product.
The final product has a beautiful color and is very easy to recognize.
Because bone china contains powder, the porcelain itself presents a natural milky white color.
In layman's terms, it has a little bit of yellow.
This feature cannot be imitated by any other porcelain type.
Then there is the permeability. The reason for the formula of bone china itself is that another important external characteristic is permeability.
But this feature is not unique to bone china. Shell porcelain, white porcelain, and pearl porcelain on the market also have permeability as long as they are made thinner.
However, there is a difference between bone china and their permeability.
For customers, put the bone china under a light bulb and see that high-grade bone china with high bone powder content is completely transparent.
Bone china with low bone powder content is also significantly different from other porcelain types in terms of transparency.
Moreover, for porcelain of the same thickness, the permeability of bone china is much higher than that of similar porcelain.
The last thing is the sound. When two high-grade bone china products are gently collided, the sound is as sweet as the sound of a wind chime, and there will be an echo for a few seconds, while other porcelain types basically have no sound.
It is for various reasons that in the production process of many high-end porcelain in modern times, some people choose white bone china, so that painting and glazing on it can further improve the quality.
Of course, whether it is possible to ensure quality and improve firing efficiency is a matter of opinion.
The most difficult thing about this Chinese red bowl that appeared on the Spring Evening is not the firing of the white bone china body, nor the complicated patterns on it, but the firing of the bright red glaze.
Chen Wenzhe has extremely rich experience in firing copper red glaze, so in his hands, even if the success rate is not high, he can make two or three red bowls out of ten.
This is better than nine out of ten, which increases the success rate by two or three times.
After making this small bowl, Chen Wenzhe thought for a moment and made many more hand-painted cherry bowls.
This is also a Chinese red bowl, but it has hand-painted cherries on it, decorating the entire small bowl.
This is easier to make. Once a large batch is finished, it can be fired directly in the kiln.
During the trial firing, a small kiln was used to occasionally fire other porcelain.
Chen Wenzhe will not be idle, nor will he have to wait.
He just needs to keep doing it step by step. After all, the porcelain embryos produced need to be dried and aired.
Including the kiln, the production of each type of porcelain takes several days.
Step by step, the final kiln will surely produce a masterpiece.
On this day, another batch of Chinese red porcelain came out of the kiln, and they were all exquisite small bowls.
Chen Wenzhe finally breathed a sigh of relief when he saw a series of small bowls that were relatively complete in shape and not too deformed.
He really didn't expect that firing bone china with red glaze would be so difficult.
Especially small bowls with intricate patterns and paintings are more difficult to bake.
At the beginning, he was very confident, but after the previous two kiln openings, his self-confidence was almost completely lost.
Even this time, the effect is not very optimistic, especially the glaze color.
Among this batch of small bowls, some have glazes that have no texture, and the glazes float on the surface, making them look frivolous.
While this is still good, there are still some cases where it is simply localized redness and has no overall effect at all.
If this was in ancient times, it could also be regarded as kiln-turned porcelain. This kind of red color that occasionally appears locally is also rare and rare.
But now he is firing a bright red Chinese red porcelain bowl. If such a porcelain bowl appears, it can only be classified as a failure.
Chen Wenzhe had not encountered such a situation for a long time, and it was only at this time that he truly realized why the red glaze had only been successfully fired in recent decades.
And even if it was invented by some modern masters, there is a saying that nine out of ten kilns will fail.
Although blue and white porcelain is a very remarkable thing, in terms of difficulty of firing, it is still red porcelain!
There are many factors involved, the most important one being that the blue and white hair color does not have very stringent requirements for firing conditions, while the red hair color is very demanding.
Red firing on porcelain has already appeared before the Song Dynasty, but almost all of them have no texture, and the glaze color floats on the surface, making it appear frivolous.
It was not until the Jun kilns of the Song Dynasty that reds with thickness and depth were fired for the first time.
But this red color is only accidental and local, rare and rare.