Chapter 1,282 A piece of cloisonn and ten boxes of official kiln utensils
Tang Kiln is the name of the Jingzhen Royal Kiln Factory supervised by Tang Ying in the Qing Dynasty and the porcelain produced under his supervision.
The book "Tang Ying and Tang Kiln" written by Zhang Deshan divides "Tang Kiln" into several periods.
The "Early Tang Kiln" dates from the sixth year of Yongzheng to the first year of Qianlong.
The "Mid-Tang Kiln" was from the second year to the sixth year of Qianlong's reign.
The "Late Tang Kiln" dates from the seventh year of Qianlong's reign to the twenty-first year of Qianlong's reign.
This is consistent with what the "Chronicles of Qianlong" says: "In February of the eleventh year of Qianlong's reign, I was ordered to burn safflower nectar bottles without paying any money."
Of course, this was also the case when "on the first day of May in the same year, Tang Ying fired the same nectar bottles according to the order: four nectar bottles with red flowers and white ground... According to the order, he kept them all, and Tang Ying burned several more nectar bottles with them." The records match.
In the twelfth year of Qianlong's reign, "On February 29, Minister Haiwang came to say: Eunuch Zhang Yu passed an order to Tang Ying to make more nectar bottles one after another."
In addition to the amrita vase, the Duomu pot, Bianba vase, Bianba pot, gold glaze, gold-glazed Amitayus Buddha, imitation wood grain glaze bowl, imitation lacquer bowl, etc. are all works of the same period.
These things are obviously high-quality products from official kilns.
However, these are all magic weapons, and there are many varieties, so Chen Wenzhe does not want to imitate them.
After all, what he is doing now is cloisonné enamel, and at this level, Chen Wenzhe is not limited to making enamelware from the Qing Dynasty.
He thought that since he had made it, he would even imitate some of the fine works of the Ming Dynasty.
Copper-embedded filigree enamel is still too troublesome to make.
After doing it this time, he will definitely not touch this kind of thing for a long time.
After all, its production used both bronze and porcelain techniques, and at the same time introduced a large number of traditional painting and carving techniques.
It can be said to be the master of traditional Chinese craftsmanship. Such works have been very rare from ancient times to the present.
The most famous cloisonné enamelware of the Ming Dynasty was cloisonné.
Cloisonné has flourished among the royal family for three to four hundred years. It was a royal craft exclusively used by emperors of the two dynasties and was known as the "Oriental Wonder".
The production of cloisonne can be roughly divided into six processes: tire making, filigree, bluing, bluing, polishing and gold plating."
If we break down the production process, there are more than 100.
It is quite labor-intensive and can be said to reflect the dignity and luxury of the royal family everywhere.
Therefore, there was a saying in ancient times that "one piece of cloisonné, ten boxes of official kiln utensils".
Nowadays, academic circles generally believe that during the Yuan Dynasty, when the Mongolian cavalry swept across the Eurasian continent, the filigree enamel craft was introduced to the Central Plains.
The filigree enamel craftsmanship is complex and meticulous, and the colors are brilliant. It was deeply loved by the rulers of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.
During the Jingtai period of the Ming Dynasty, the filigree enamel craft reached its peak, leaving behind the name "Cloisonne".
The "Jingtai" in cloisonné is the reign name of Zhu Qiyu, the seventh emperor of the Ming Dynasty.
Emperor Zhu Qiyu of the Ming Dynasty was definitely a legendary emperor, as famous as the Mingmen Emperor.
Not talking about cloisonné, just blue glaze. During the Jingtai period, there was a great breakthrough.
The blue glazes of the Jingtai period were the breakthrough inventions of sky blue, cobalt blue, and sapphire blue, and blue was often used as the background color, making it look elegant, noble, calm and generous.
As a result, although Jingtai was not the first to create this kind of utensil, it was later uniformly called "Cloisonne".
"Remaining Records of Chunming Meng", written in the late Ming Dynasty, puts the gorgeous Jingtai enamels on par with Xuande bronzes, Yongle lacquers, and Chenghua doucai, and considers them to be "exquisite and far ahead of the ancient times."
In the Qing Dynasty, the emperors of the third generation of the Qing Dynasty were even more enthusiastic about enamelware.
Chen Wenzhe made a lot of copper-embedded filigree enamels in the Qing Dynasty, so I won’t mention them here, let’s just go back to cloisonné.
Since it is called cloisonné, it naturally revolves around burning blue.
Since the Yuan Dynasty, it seems that rulers of all dynasties have always been very fond of blue.
For "that touch of blue", countless little lives, plant indigo dyeing, blue and white porcelain, and the cloisonné that will be mentioned soon are needed.
The three types of blue, cloisonné, burnt blue and point blue, are a bit confusing at first glance, but they are familiar and hard to say.
The commonly heard bluing and dot bluing are two steps in cloisonne firing, that is, they are not independent processes.
The steps for firing cloisonné include carving, filigreeing, gluing, welding, dotting, bluing, and polishing.
It is very necessary to know these steps, otherwise how can we understand the value of cloisonne?
Because it’s really cumbersome! Every step of cloisonné is quite difficult and solid!
To put it simply, this process starts with tire making.
The carcass is hammered thousands of times to achieve the desired effect.
Then there are filigree, glued wire, and welded wire, that is, the pinched thin wire is glued and welded to the sidewall to form a pattern or pattern.
After that, there is bluing and bluing, that is, applying glaze to the filigree and firing it in the kiln.
The last step is polishing. After completion, the surfaces of the glaze and copper wire are polished until smooth and smooth, and then polished.
Blue-pointing and blue-burning are interleaved steps.
Once blued, it is fired once. After firing, the glaze will be concave, and then blued again and then fired.
It needs to be repeated three or four times until the glaze and silk are at the same height.
Blushing and burning are the two most famous steps.
Not only do these two words sound beautiful, but they are also the most important step in making the utensils beautiful.
Dian Lan is outstanding because this link is interesting, elegant, and provides a high-involvement and touching experience.
To put it simply, clicking blue means coloring.
Chen Wenzhe first saw this kind of craft on TV.
Zhang Guoli, the "Emperor" in costume dramas and the host of several large-scale traditional Chinese culture programs, has experienced Dianlan.
In Shendu TV's "Extraordinary Craftsmanship", Zhang Guoli personally experienced the extremely detailed and complicated craftsmanship of cloisonne.
Experience is experience, it is still difficult to do this job.
He lamented, "When lighting blue, one is as small as a filigree gap, and each color is different; I also have to do gradients, and sometimes my hands shake a little, and the colors are mixed, making me dizzy at the end of the day."
Making gradients is to make the entire pattern more realistic and natural, otherwise it will be "dumb".
A good cloisonné work must have high production requirements.
From dark to light glaze, fire it step by step.
At this time, you will find that blue is not just blue, but also other colors.
So, bluing is not just blue?
In fact, there are many glaze colors used in point blue, the common ones are blue, green, red, yellow, white, etc.
As mentioned earlier, cloisonné is also called copper tire filigree enamel.
This is its general name. There are also cloisonné works made of gold body and silver body, that is, gold body cloisonné enamel and silver body cloisonné enamel.
The latter two are more expensive and relatively rare.
The name bluing comes from the fact that silver is used as the body, and blue is used as glaze when bluing. The blue glaze is the most beautiful when matched with silver.
Therefore, burnt blue is also called silver burnt blue.