The last step in making the porcelain is to make the drawing. After finalizing the drawing, use two layers of photographed drawings (matte rough edges) to wet them. After the dryness and wetness are suitable, photograph the drawing on the porcelain and re-photograph it to make the original drawing.
Taking pictures is even easier. If you want to copy and produce, after the taken artwork is dry,
Use a thicker ink with less glue to redraw it, and then soak it in water. You can photograph hundreds of pieces of porcelain.
Many modern porcelains with exquisite patterns all come from this.
Does this craft look familiar? In fact, this is the decal craft.
But when I first started doing this, the technology seemed a bit rough.
In modern times, this is called moving flowers.
Flower transfer is to use the pasting method to move the colorful patterns on the flower paper to the ceramic body or glaze.
Divided into overglaze decals and underglaze decals, etc.
Glaze decals include film transfer, clear water decals and glue decals, etc.
Underglaze decals only print the outline of the pattern on the decal paper, and then manually fill in the color after pad printing;
There are also lines and colors that are applied at once, called water decals.
There are two types of decals: paper and plastic film. Paper decals must go through processes such as paper removal and washing.
Later, film decals were invented, which eliminated the need for processes such as paper removal and facilitated mechanized and continuous operations.
These are all techniques developed to not only make beautiful porcelain, but also to produce it quickly and on a large scale.
Of course, there is no good or bad craftsmanship, only the work is good or bad.
Even if you use decal technology, you can still produce top-quality porcelain.
For example, the Qing Palace Construction Office, to be precise, it should be the "enamel work" established by the Qing Palace Construction Office.
Their craftsmen are great and can do everything well.
However, because Chen Wenzhe does not need to mass-produce porcelain, he does not need to use the decal process, and he has never done it.
Now Chen Wenzhe wants to make a porcelain mother-piece, not to show off his skills.
But to learn.
After all, there are too many craftsmanships on the porcelain mother. If he can make one, it means that all his craftsmanship has reached the level of the palace manufacturing offices of the third generation of Qing Dynasty.
This is not simple, let’s talk about the porcelain mother-in-law.
In the thirteenth year of Qianlong's reign, Tang Ying, who was sixty-six years old, received the order from Emperor Qianlong and was responsible for firing various large glazed vases of Qianlong's reign in the Qing Dynasty.
In order to achieve this goal, Tang Ying sent his right assistants to Ge Kiln, Ru Kiln, Jun Kiln, Ding Kiln, Longquan Kiln, Xianghu Kiln and other famous kilns across the country.
He collected formulas or porcelain specimens, or carefully studied relevant descriptions in ancient documents, and then repeatedly developed, tested, and successfully fired.
Therefore, it is still necessary to learn Yangcai and become familiar with the production techniques of the five famous kilns of the Northern Song Dynasty.
What I made this time was a Ge Kiln vase, which was also imitated from the Song Dynasty.
Still the same sentence, if it were the original,
To imitate such a bile bottle,
Chen Wenzhe still needs to think hard and think about it carefully.
But now he has no difficulty in making such a bile bottle.
The bile bottle currently made by Chen Wenzhe is not large. When it is finally fired, it should be 14.2 cm high, 2.2 cm wide, and 5.4 cm wide.
The shape of this instrument is an imitation of the real thing.
In other words, he was imitating something with a name. The original work belonged to the Qing Palace collection and is well known to the world.
It should be noted here that there is another biggest difficulty in imitating porcelain, and that is the size of the vessel.
It turns out that Chen Wenzhe has never worried about this, because he has experience and can make the final imitation product very different from the original product.
Besides, when imitations are made, they are usually appreciated as genuine ones.
As for genuine porcelain, even if it is a pair and fired together, the size will not be exactly the same.
Therefore, Chen Wenzhe never cared about this before.
However, if you want to imitate some famous products, such as the Qing Yongzheng pink celadon glazed decal Double Dragon Pan Mouth Zun, this porcelain is the earliest high imitation made by Chen Wenzhe.
After he made it, it caused a sensation as soon as it was exhibited in Yi Niantang. Why?
It's not that he imitated it well, it's exactly the same as the real thing.
High imitation, isn’t that what it is?
It’s really not necessarily true. The reason why Chen Wenzhe imitates the standard is because of his great skills.
When he was doing it, the biggest technical difficulty for him was the glaze color, which was pink-green glaze.
At that time, he had just begun to study celadon porcelain, let alone the pink celadon glaze of the official kiln during the Yongzheng period.
It was already very rare for him to be able to do it at that time.
The biggest difficulty in imitating this kind of famous porcelain, worth more than 100 million yuan, is actually not the glaze color, but mainly the shape of the vessel.
Some people may ask, what’s so difficult about the shape of the vessel? Isn’t it just a Pankou statue?
What is a Pankou Zun? Isn't it just a larger bottle with a mouth shaped like a plate?
Although this thing is more difficult to make than the Tutong bottle, can it be considered a task for a slightly more skilled porcelain worker?
In fact, the glaze color and the shape of the vessel are not the main issues. The biggest issue is the size.
Although we all come into contact with porcelain every day, few people know, or in other words, few people notice that the size of the porcelain embryo and the final fired product are completely different.
Before firing, when making embryos, they should be much larger.
Only after being fired in the kiln will the embryo shrink to the state we commonly see.
When it comes to bottles, our feelings are not too deep.
If you want to talk about tea bowls, then you have feelings.
The tea bowls we usually use for drinking tea are only about ten centimeters high at most, but such a tea cup, the newly made embryo, before it is fired in the kiln, is still more than ten centimeters high.
It's obviously taller and a lot fatter, so this type of tea set is quite big.
This involves a shrinkage ratio of fired porcelain, which is technically called the firing shrinkage rate.
Why do I say this? Because when making Ge Kiln wares, the shrinkage ratio is too important.
We all know the characteristics of Ge kiln, the most famous one is Baijun Sha, which means to put it more clearly, it is the opening of the glaze of the porcelain.
Ru kiln porcelain is also cut into pieces, but it is not as distinctive as Ge kiln.
Also, it turns out that Chen Wenzhe knew a lot of things but didn't know why. He knew how to do many crafts, but he didn't study them thoroughly.
As more porcelain was fired, the techniques involved increased, and many details became clearer to him.
For example, when porcelain is opened into slices, it is actually the difference in thermal expansion coefficient that causes the glaze to break.
Broken, but still beautifully broken, this allows this art to develop and grow.
If you want to continue firing porcelain that allows the glaze to open into pieces, you will eventually have to face the problem of shrinkage ratio during the firing of porcelain.
If you want to control the firing shrinkage ratio, you must know the firing shrinkage rate.
Firing shrinkage is a physical quantity that represents the reduction in volume or length of the dried body of ceramics, refractories, bricks, etc. during the baking process.
This is a technical indicator for evaluating the quality of the above-mentioned materials and a main parameter for manufacturing molds.