There are many types of porcelain pillows, and baby pillows are just one of them.
Now that Chen Wenzhe has made many children's pillows, he naturally started making other types of porcelain pillows.
After all, compared to children's pillows, other types of porcelain pillows have been handed down from generation to generation.
Seriously, the history of real porcelain pillows can be traced back to the Sui Dynasty.
In Anyang, Nanhe, the earliest porcelain pillow was unearthed from the tomb of Zhang Sheng in the 15th year of Emperor Kaihuang's reign in the Sui Dynasty.
In the Tang Dynasty, porcelain pillows gradually increased in number.
They are generally rectangular in shape and small in size. Some are pillows for sleeping, and some are pulse pillows for taking pulses.
In the Song Dynasty, porcelain pillows reached their heyday, with many shapes available.
Such as oval, rectangular, octagonal, Ruyi-shaped, silver ingot-shaped, leaf-shaped, fan-shaped, flower-shaped, saddle-shaped, lying baby-shaped, beauty-shaped, etc.
It is understood that the most famous porcelain pillows were produced in several places at that time.
Among them, in addition to the Ding kiln in the north, the white ground and black flower pillows of the Cizhou kiln are also typical representatives.
The porcelain pillows they produce have strong contrasting black and white colors, vivid and expressive pictures and patterns, and flexible use of poetry and mottos, and no one is better than them.
The south is divided into two schools, one is the blue and white porcelain pillow produced in Jingzhen, which is famous for its jade-like glaze color;
The other is the green glaze pillow produced by Jizhou kiln, which is famous for its unique decoration.
Or let’s talk about the green glaze Ruyi-shaped banana leaf pattern pillow, which is the representative work of Jizhou kiln.
Jizhou Kiln is located in Ji'an County, Xijiang. It was founded in the Five Dynasties period. It became more prosperous in the Song Dynasty and became a famous kiln at that time.
In fact, Jizhou kiln is inextricably linked with Ding kiln and Cizhou kiln in the north.
After the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, many northern craftsmen moved to the Jiangnan area to escape the war.
They brought the advanced technology of famous northern kilns and integrated them with local customs.
For example, the green glaze pillows from Jizhou kiln were also fired in Cizhou kiln in the north.
However, the shapes, decorations and decoration methods of the two are different.
If we sum it up, there are two or three ways to make porcelain pillows.
It can be said to be two or three.
But in the Song Dynasty, there should be two types.
One is to cut it into a suitable mud board first, set it up, and then trim it when it is semi-dry.
The thickness of the mud board is generally between 7 and 8 mm. The joints of the mud boards are dipped in mud with mud strips and then connected and compacted, and then fired in the kiln;
Another method is to mold the mold, use soft mud on the mold, evenly spread out a certain thickness of mud plate, and then close it up.
After waiting for the shape to be finalized, take out the mud blank and trim it.
Then apply makeup soil to carve patterns or paint.
After the billet is semi-dry, punch a hole in the back to prevent the hot air from expanding and leaking out during firing and damaging the billet.
For example, the green glaze Ruyi-shaped banana leaf pattern pillow was made using the second method.
The craftsmen at that time dug out a small hole about half a centimeter in diameter at one end of the pillow.
If you pick up the pillow and shake it, it still makes a ding-dong sound. That’s because there are mud balls left in the pillow.
Over the past thousand years, the practical value of porcelain pillows has gradually disappeared.
However, because its surface often has various calligraphy and painting patterns left by predecessors, it has become an important carrier of folk calligraphy and painting.
This has played a huge role in preserving the ancient folk art of calligraphy and painting.
Materials such as paper and silk, which are the general carriers of calligraphy and painting, have often been destroyed by various accidents after thousands of years and are extremely difficult to pass down.
The porcelain pillow is made of solid material, so it has completely preserved and recorded a large amount of valuable folk art, allowing today's people to appreciate the creativity of folk art thousands of years ago.
Unfortunately, porcelain pillows were eventually eliminated by history.
By the end of the Republic of China, porcelain pillows slowly disappeared from people's lives and were gradually replaced by pillows made of soft cotton.
However, cultural relics are not only precious material treasures, but also an important way to understand the life experience, aesthetic orientation, and spiritual pursuits of ancient people, so as to learn from the past and understand the present.
Among them, Ding porcelain has too many extraordinary features.
However, compared to Ding porcelain children's pillows, there are really many fine porcelain pillows from other eras.
Now that Chen Wenzhe can make porcelain pillows from Ding Kiln, he can also make porcelain pillows from other eras better.
As a popular daily utensil among ancient porcelain, porcelain pillows have been recorded as early as the Spring and Autumn Period.
In addition, during archaeological excavations, pillows from the Spring and Autumn Period were also unearthed from Chu tombs in Baoshan, Jingmen, Beihu, and Chu tombs in Xinyang, Nanhe.
This is enough to show that the ancients had already begun to use pillows in the Spring and Autumn Period.
According to existing literature records, the main types of ceramic pillows include low-temperature glazed ceramics and high-temperature glazed ceramics.
The shapes initially included box-shaped pillows and animal-shaped pillows, and then developed into architectural pillows, human-shaped pillows, case-shaped pillows, etc.
The pillows of this period were hollow in the middle, and to prevent firing deformation, air holes were usually left on the back wall or bottom.
Judging from the distribution area of porcelain pillows, they are mainly found from north to south, and from south to east coast.
The size of porcelain pillows also continued to increase from small to large, with the smallest one in the Sui Dynasty, with a length of no more than 5 centimeters, and increased to about 15 centimeters in the Tang Dynasty.
Some porcelain pillows from the Yuan Dynasty can reach about 40 centimeters in length.
It has gone through the process of "small porcelain pillows in the Tang Dynasty, large porcelain pillows in the Song Dynasty, and ever-changing porcelain pillows in the Jin and Yuan Dynasties (Southern Song Dynasty)".
The manufacturing process of ceramic pillows is no longer the two methods used for Ding kiln porcelain pillows in the Song Dynasty, but there are three main methods.
The first is the joining and forming of clay slabs, the second is molding and the third is sculpture forming.
Sometimes it is made using one manufacturing method, and sometimes it is made using a combination of two manufacturing methods.
In the production process of porcelain pillows, the decorative techniques are also diverse, colorful and varied.
The carcass decoration is mainly completed by carving, ticking, sticking, scratching, inlaying, twisting, molding and other processes on the porcelain pillow carcass itself.
In particular, there are many kinds of porcelain pillows among the twisted porcelain from the Tang and Song Dynasties.
In addition, there is a process of decorating ceramics through the use of glazes.
For example, single-color glaze, three-color glaze, red and green glaze, pastel and other decorative techniques.
Especially for porcelain pillows after the Song and Jin Dynasties, the carcass decoration and glaze technology can be used alone, or both processes can be used at the same time.
As for the decorative patterns of ceramic pillows, they are diverse in form, rich in content, and with a wide range of themes.
There are poems, aphorisms, rhymes, etc., as well as paintings, sculptures, etc.
Most of them are represented by myths and historical stories, celebrity allusions, folk customs, life scenes, sports and entertainment activities.
There are also natural landscapes, birds and animals, humanistic flowers and birds, plants and flowers, exorcism and suppression of demons, house control, praying for blessings, and warding off evil spirits.
This shows the ancients' yearning for a better life and artistic pursuit.
After being popular in the Tang, Five Dynasties, Northern Song, Southern Song, Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties, ceramic pillows began to slowly decline.
In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, although porcelain pillows continued to be fired, both the shape and decoration tended to decline, and the number of production gradually decreased until they disappeared.