Most of the blue and white porcelain produced in Jingzhen of the Yuan Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty used sumac green material to draw flowers and leaves. After the Ming Dynasty, it was gradually replaced by Huiqing and other materials.
Having said it so clearly, is it still difficult to find some sumali green materials now?
Of course, if Chen Wenzhe was the first to do this kind of research, that is to say, it would not be easy to find the source of ancient Suma Liqing.
However, he does not need to do this kind of work himself!
He is now very clear that "Suma Li Qing" is from Iraq.
Why is this? Because predecessors have been studying it for a long time, and they have studied it very thoroughly!
In fact, in the early days of our country, that is, the Yuan blue and white era, people have been studying what the underglaze green material used in these blue and white porcelains was and where it came from.
The glaze, commonly known as "Su Ma Li Qing" or "Su Bo Ni Qing", has cobalt blue as its main coloring agent.
Where does this cobalt blue material come from? For a hundred years, Chinese ceramic experts have been working tirelessly to find the answer.
Cobalt oxide is the most stable coloring agent!
No matter it is fired repeatedly or under any glaze, it will show a stable blue color.
And the quantity also determines the difference in this blue color.
0.25% cobalt oxide shows a brilliant blue color in the glaze.
1% cobalt oxide gives a very deep blue color in the glaze.
When the cobalt oxide is slightly higher than 1%, it will appear blue-black or black.
These technical points may have been mastered by the ancients, but it must have been very difficult to master them.
But for Chen Wenzhe, he can master it just by reading a piece of literature.
Only by mastering these key points can we produce more exquisite blue and white porcelain.
It has to be said that in some places, people are naturally blessed with wealth and honor. Then we have to see if they have the destiny to enjoy this blessing.
In that region of the Middle East, oil and natural gas are abundant, as well as various other mineral materials, such as cobalt ore, and there are also many.
There are rich cobalt deposits in the northern parts of Oman and Hega in Iraq.
The use of cobalt ore in local pottery was already widespread in the Abbasi era (758-1258).
In the 9th century AD, which was the Tang Dynasty of my country, Samara's trade with the Persian Gulf region was the most prosperous period.
Therefore, this place has become the most important and largest pottery making center in Iraq.
It is located on the east bank of the Tigris River, 125 kilometers north of Baghdad.
From 836 to 892, it served as the capital of the Abbasid Dynasty.
It was also an important large city in the Persian Gulf in ancient times. The development of its pottery industry was directly funded and supported by the king.
Through literature research and inspection, we learned that the caliphs in Abbasi's era couldn't help but want to imitate the beautiful jade-like porcelain from our country.
After all, there are really too few exquisite porcelains transported.
There is nothing we can do about this. Because these porcelains are precious and fragile, they can only be brought back from my country after a year and a half of voyage.
This prompted Khalifa to build his own kiln to produce imitation Chinese porcelain.
The porcelain fragments unearthed in Samara prove that the first pottery fired here was completely imitated from my country's Xing kiln white porcelain.
Due to the lack of important porcelain clay - kaolin, imitation ceramics cannot essentially become high-temperature porcelain.
Due to their special aesthetic orientation, the Yilan people who advocated blue successfully used cobalt oxide as an underglaze pigment and successfully fired blue and white pottery, which was a contribution to ceramic decoration.
At that time, merchants must have imagined and tried to bring cobalt materials and styles suitable for Yilan's appreciation needs to order and burn porcelain in our country.
These cobalt materials were obtained from Samara.
The pronunciation of Samara in ancient times has always been samarra. It was written as souma in ancient Greek, sumere in Latin, and sumra in Syriac.
The imported materials used in early blue and white in my country were Suma Liqing and Subo Niqing!
This pronunciation is the same as that of Samara and the Syrian place name "sumra" that was commonly used at that time.
Samara is rich in cobalt minerals and is a porcelain manufacturing center that produces large quantities of underglaze blue and white porcelain. At the same time, it is very close to Baghdad, the final destination and distribution center of blue and white porcelain trade since the Tang and Song Dynasties in my country, especially in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties.
Wang Shimao's "Guitian Waicheng" in the 17th year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty records: "...the official kiln in our dynasty was specially set up in Jingzhen, Fuliang County, between Yongle and Xuande, and was fired in the inner mansion. It is the most expensive so far. With Sumali
Green is the ornament, and bright red is the treasure.”
Gao Lian's "Zun Sheng Yu Jian" in the 19th year of Wanli also recorded: "The green color of Xuan kiln is the green color of Su and Bo mud".
In the following hundreds of years, there were many records about Su Maliqing, so this cannot simply be regarded as a coincidence or speculation.
It is not known exactly when cobalt blue material was brought to our country by traders.
However, the special color development of early blue and white porcelain in my country from the Yuan Dynasty, Hongwu, Yongle, Xuande, etc. in the Ming Dynasty, combined with literature and modern chemical analysis, can clearly prove that Sumali Qing is the cobalt blue material from Samarra, Iraq.
From the inspection of the collection of Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, the blue and white porcelain of the Yuan Dynasty in my country, especially the strong Persian miniature painting style and its excellent quality, as well as the collection of museums in my country, the quality of most blue and white porcelain of the Yuan Dynasty is incomparable. , it can also be confirmed that at that time, Jingzhen used materials to process according to orders, and selected high-quality utensils for export.
The blue and white raw materials from Samara are also called Sumali and Subo Ni after the name of the place of origin.
Even today, several centuries later, we still use it as the special name for the imported blue material of early blue and white porcelain.
Therefore, it is not difficult to find real Suma Liqing, because the reserves in Iraq are very abundant.
It's not difficult to get the raw ore there, and it's rare that it's processed using ancient methods.
A kind of cobalt blue material is not used immediately after it is obtained, it must be processed.
This is the same regardless of ancient or modern times.
Ancient craftsmanship is not available to ordinary people, and many of them have been lost.
So if Jingzhen wants to re-burn, even if they have qualified Ma Cang soil, they still need a lot of time to study the suma liqing mineral materials dug out in modern times, and how to deal with them so that they can have the ancient people firing Yuan Qinghua.
feature.
Chen Wenzhe doesn't have to go through such trouble, because he can directly obtain the processing method of Sumali Qing material.
By now, he can say that he has opened up all the joints of the ancient method of re-burning Yuan Qinghua.
Purchase suma green materials and kaolin from Jingzhen, and after processing them according to the Yuan Dynasty process, you can directly mix them with mud and make embryos.
He doesn't even need to go to Iraq to buy, he can get everything he wants directly from Jingzhen.
With the appropriate raw materials and the particularity of the Yuan blue and white craftsmanship, Chen Wenzhe was already very familiar with it. After all, he had already imitated the large Yuan blue and white Guiguzi jar before.
At this time, making some peony-patterned utensils now is definitely not as difficult as the large Guiguzi jar.
"Let's make a double-gourd and peony vase first!" Chen Wenzhe soon made a decision.