Chapter 1,222 The first person to imitate ancient times
There is no expert in the world who dares to say with confidence that he can make a correct judgment on the authenticity of Yuan Qinghua with 100% certainty!
Anyone who says he is 100% sure must be a liar.
Because even Chen Wenzhe sometimes cannot accurately tell that a fine imitation of Yuan blue and white is a fake, unless he cheats.
If there is no cheating method, who can be 100% confident that they can identify a piece of Yuan blue and white without any faults?
Chen Wenzhe is a special case. He has a cheating device, so he usually knows that there must be something wrong with it.
Once you know the answer, it is often much easier to find flaws.
The craftsmanship of Yuan blue and white is already a very mature craft in the eyes of these clever imitators.
They immersed themselves in the Yuan Dynasty 700 years ago, figured out the way of the Yuan people, and felt the atmosphere of the Yuan people.
This has nothing to do with craftsmanship, but everything to do with feeling.
When craftsmen capture this wonderful feeling, Yuanqinghua, which is indistinguishable from the real thing, is born.
What Chen Wenzhe wants to learn is the skills of these people.
Also, the reason why these people's craftsmanship appears is not just to imitate the past and deceive people, but they really want to restore this top-notch work of art.
So, can anyone really imitate the perfect Yuan Qinghua?
There really are, and they are all master-level.
For example, the first person in China to imitate antique porcelain has professionally imitated Yuan blue and white, and the first thing he wanted to imitate was the Guiguzi Descending Mountain jar.
If Chen Wenzhe wants to save some things, then learning the craftsmanship of the country's number one antique porcelain expert would be the fastest way.
However, when his level has reached his level, simple imitation is no longer his pursuit.
Research is the foundation for improving one's level, so Chen Wenzhe didn't look directly at the answer at first.
He planned to do some research on his own, after all, others had already found a way.
This lets him know that there must be a road ahead, and as long as he is willing to explore, he will surely find the right path.
Moreover, his research direction is also right. As long as he is willing to study, it is only a matter of time before he can make the perfect Yuan blue and white.
Therefore, this time, Chen Wenzhe did not directly learn the master's craftsmanship, but slowly explored the process of Yuan blue and white re-burning through the knowledge he searched for.
With in-depth research, Chen Wenzhe also admired the Chinese people more and more.
Except for some accomplished masters in China, other craftsmen are really able to endure hardships.
Just like Yuan Qinghua, in just a few decades, many fake ones have appeared.
Of course, these are just perfect on the outside. If you really look at the inside, you won’t be able to see them anymore.
But it was such a batch of imitations that, in the first few years when people were unsuspecting, they made their way into the world and achieved great success.
From the perspective of today's appraisers, high imitation Yuan blue and white pieces from more than ten years ago are of a certain standard.
Nowadays, Yuan blue and white have been imitated for more than 40 years, and they still have some experience, so if you take a quick look, many imitations are quite interesting.
But if you look carefully, there is still a problem.
Chen Wenzhe just needs to discover these problems and avoid them.
If all the problems can be solved, then his imitation of Yuan Qinghua will be comparable to some domestic masters, right?
Chen Wenzhe is currently studying high-end imitations, and even if these high-end imitations are ordinary imitations, there are no major problems with their appearance.
Then there is definitely no big problem with decorative painting.
The main problem now is the footing.
Because the bottom foot is exposed, the color of the exposed tire is generally not done well.
The base color of many imitation Yuan blue and white porcelain is basically light yellow.
This color is a sign of old age, and the other is the foot wall, which is generally made with glaze and is not very natural.
With imitations of this level, you can still spot problems as long as you look at them repeatedly.
As for some high-end imitations that are closer to now, that is, those high-end imitations that easily sell for three to five million yuan, it is difficult for ordinary people to identify them.
However, as time goes by, while the identification level of collectors on the market has improved, so has the level of imitation craftsmanship.
At the very least, the materials used are more sophisticated, so the Yuan blue and white produced in this way are better and more difficult to identify.
However, since the macang soil and the green material sumaliqing, which are the base materials of Yuan blue and white porcelain, have long been exhausted, it is difficult for other materials to imitate the effects of these two materials, so this has stumped many people.
Also, many current painters cannot reach the painting level of professional painters in the Yuan Dynasty.
At present, there are huge differences between the Yuan blue and white porcelain imitated by imitators and the genuine Yuan blue and white porcelain, making it difficult to distinguish the fake from the real.
However, Chen Wenzhe can find solutions to all these problems.
The simplest among them is craftsmanship, such as painting, decoration, drawing technology, etc.
Here we need to mention the embryo drawing process in particular, because the embryo production of Yuan blue and white is also different from that of current porcelain.
Making antique porcelain, especially Yuan blue and white, requires special attention.
Because among the technical characteristics of Yuan blue and white, the most different from the Ming and Qing Dynasties is the blank making process.
We are used to seeing billowing in ceramic technology, and we also know that billowing can improve efficiency in ceramic production.
But in the Yuan blue and white era, the drawing process had not yet been implemented. Regardless of whether the Yuan blue and white ware was cut or rounded, the first process was to print the blank.
The printing blank is a mold impression. The mold comes first and is formed later.
If you understand this, you can understand why there are so many eight-sided plum vases, eight-sided gourd vases, eight-sided jade pots, large ridged plates, and small plates with flowered mouths in Yuan blue and white.
These molding examples are not free from the influence of Song Yingqing's molding technology, and are the same as Jingzhen's contemporaneous Shufu glaze works.
Molding is the manufacturing principle of Yuan blue and white. Unfortunately, this principle has been ignored by researchers and imitators for a long time, resulting in a long marathon of imitation of Yuan blue and white.
The second is the pigment used in the Yuan Dynasty, which is cobalt material, which is divided into imported and domestically produced.
These two materials have long since disappeared and there is no possibility of imitation, so they are unique.
Speaking of which, by 2010 there were already different opinions on what kind of pigments were used in the Yuan Dynasty.
For example, the Dahai Silicate Research Institute believes through machine testing that the pigments (cobalt materials) used in Yuan blue and white are all imported cobalt materials, regardless of thickness, and there are no domestic materials. The previous concept hopes to be corrected.
But is the problem really that simple? Maybe not.
This result was surprising when first seen, but it was quickly questioned by many scholars.
For example, when explaining the different hair colors of Yuan blue and white, is it the reason for the different places of the raw materials, or is it the reason itself?
What is its essence? Also, the imported materials themselves are very valuable and scarce, can they all be generously used to make utensils needed at different levels?
Moreover, the difference in color between high-quality utensils and ordinary utensils is very obvious.
For example, the crystal spots are black, brown, or gray, and they are halo, scattered, and flow.
All this shows that the essence of materials is not only the difference in the amount of elements, but also the difference in structure.