If you think about it carefully, Chen Wenzhe has almost made all other glaze colors, but he has never made blue and white porcelain in particular.
This is a bit wrong. We have done other fighting colors and five colors, so how can we not do blue and white?
Blue and white porcelain, to be precise, it should be called white ground blue and white porcelain, often referred to as blue and white. It is one of the mainstream varieties of porcelain in my country and is a type of underglaze colored porcelain.
Firing blue and white porcelain is naturally not difficult.
As for the various types of blue and white porcelain, Chen Wenzhe can also do the best.
Therefore, what should be studied most now is the blue and white material.
In fact, to put it simply, blue and white porcelain is a porcelain that uses cobalt ore containing cobalt oxide as raw material, depicts patterns on the ceramic body, then covers it with a layer of transparent glaze, and fires it once with a high-temperature reduction flame.
Cobalt material turns blue after being fired. It has the characteristics of strong tinting power, bright color, high firing rate and stable color.
Otherwise, blue and white porcelain would not be widely spread.
Although blue and white is very beautiful, there are many more beautiful glaze colors. Why is blue and white the most widely known?
Isn’t it easy to burn and low cost?
People nowadays think that blue and white porcelain was invented in the Yuan Dynasty, but it is not.
To be precise, the original blue and white porcelain had already appeared in the Tang and Song Dynasties.
In other words, blue and white porcelain also existed in the Tang and Song dynasties.
To put it this way, the Yuan Dynasty only promoted blue and white porcelain, rather than creating it.
Of course, mature blue and white porcelain must have appeared in the Hutian Kiln of JDZ in the Yuan Dynasty.
In the Ming Dynasty, blue and white became the mainstream of porcelain.
Especially during the Xuande period of the Ming Dynasty, it reached its peak.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, derivative varieties such as blue and white glazed blue and white, peacock green glazed blue and white, bean green glazed blue and white, blue and white glazed red, yellow ground blue and white, Ge glazed blue and white were also created and burned.
Let’s go back to the Tang Dynasty. The blue and white porcelain of the Tang Dynasty was in the origin period of blue and white porcelain.
The specimens we can see now include more than 20 blue and white porcelain fragments unearthed in Yangshi in the 1970s and 1980s;
There is also a blue and white striped replica collected by Feng Pingshan Museum in Xiangjiang;
A floral-patterned bowl from the collection of the Boston Museum;
A fish and algae pattern jar from the Copenhagen Museum, Denmark;
A stippling plum blossom-patterned vessel cover collected by Jinling Museum.
By studying the body, glaze and color of the porcelain pieces unearthed in Yang City, and analyzing the material and technical conditions of the Gongxian kiln in the Tang Dynasty, it was preliminarily concluded that the origin of the Tang blue and white flowers was the Gongxian kiln in Nanhe.
In recent years, a small number of blue and white porcelain specimens have been unearthed from the kiln site in Gong County.
This further confirmed that the origin of Tang Qinghua was in Gong County Kiln, Nanhe.
Judging from the blue and white porcelain tiles unearthed in Yangshi, the green material has a rich color with crystal spots, and is a low-manganese, low-iron, copper- and cobalt-containing material.
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This kind of mineral material should be cobalt material imported from Central and Western Asia.
The porcelain produced in this way has a rough and loose texture, is beige in color, and has a poor degree of sintering.
The base glaze is white with a hint of yellow, and the enamel is thick.
Between the glaze, apply makeup soil.
The types of utensils are mainly small, including bowls, jars, lids, etc.
Except for the fish and algae pattern jar collected by the Copenhagen Museum in Denmark, the rest are all flower and plant patterns.
Among them, the flower and plant patterns are divided into two categories. One is typical traditional Chinese flowers and plants, with small flowers such as dianthus and plum blossoms being the most common;
The other type is a typical Arabic eucalyptus pattern that contains scattered leaf patterns among geometric figures such as rhombuses.
From this point of view, combined with the locations where many Tang blue and white porcelains were unearthed (Yangshi was an important port in the Tang Dynasty), it can be proved that Tang blue and white porcelain was mainly sold for export.
Since blue and white porcelain appeared in the Tang Dynasty, it must also have appeared in the Song Dynasty.
Song Qinghua, probably few people have heard of it.
After Tang Qinghua passed its initial stage, it did not develop rapidly, but declined.
There is a reason for this, because the Song Dynasty did not have the vast territory like the Tang Dynasty.
Especially after losing the northwest region, it is impossible to reach Central Asia. This means that there is no source of blue and white materials, and the decline will naturally become more severe.
So far, the only blue and white pieces of Song Dynasty we can see are more than ten porcelain fragments unearthed from two pagoda base sites.
The first is the base of the Jinsha Tower that was excavated in Longquan County, Jiangsu and Zhejiang in 1957, and a total of 13 blue and white bowl fragments were unearthed.
On the bricks of the tower, there is an absolute date of the Northern Song Dynasty, "the second year of Taiping and Xingguo" (977);
Another place is that in 1970, a fragment of the belly of a blue and white bowl was unearthed from the base of the Huancui Pagoda in Shaoxing, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
The stele unearthed at the base of the pagoda proves that the pagoda was built in the first year of Xianchun in the Southern Song Dynasty (1265).
These more than ten Song Dynasty blue and white porcelain pieces are all fragments of bowls.
Some fetuses are thicker and some are thinner.
The patterns include chrysanthemum pattern, circle pattern, string pattern, line pattern, etc.
The first part of the blue and white hair color is thicker and black;
The latter one is duller.
If the hair color is darker, it should be because the outer transparent glaze is too thin.
Jiangsu and Zhejiang itself are rich in cobalt minerals, and these blue and white porcelains should have used local cobalt materials.
They have no direct continuing relationship with Tang Qinghua.
After the development of the Tang and Song Dynasties, in the Yuan Dynasty, because of the great unification, the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty were able to obtain more resources.
At this time, blue and white porcelain really developed.
Mature blue and white porcelain appeared in Jingzhen in the Yuan Dynasty.
We all know now that the body of Yuan blue and white porcelain adopts the binary formula of "porcelain stone + kaolin".
This increases the alumina content in the tire, increases the firing temperature, and reduces the deformation rate during the baking process.
Therefore, the carcass of most utensils is thick and the shape is thick and full.
The color of the fetus is slightly gray or yellow, and the quality of the fetus is loose.
The bottom glaze is divided into two types: green white and egg white, which have a strong milky feeling.
The green materials used include two types, high manganese and low iron green materials, which are bluish in color and grayish black in color;
Low manganese and high iron type green material, green and rich in color, with rust spots.
On some utensils, there are also two situations where they are used together.
The types of utensils mainly include daily utensils, offering utensils, tomb-suppressing utensils, etc.
In particular, the bamboo goblet, holder, and tomb-holding ware are the most distinctive of the era.
Except for the jade pot, which has a spring base with a full glaze, the other utensils have sandy bottoms with no glaze, showing flint red.
The biggest feature of Yuan blue and white decoration is that it has a rich composition and many layers without being chaotic.
The brushwork is mostly one stroke and one stroke, smooth and powerful;
Outlined and rendered, it is strong and calm.
The themes of thematic decoration include characters, animals, plants, poetry, etc.
Characters include Gaoshi Tu (Four Loves Tu), historical figures, etc.;
Animals include dragons, phoenixes, unicorns, mandarin ducks, swimming fish, etc.;
Common plants include peonies, lotus, orchids, pine, bamboo, plum, Ganoderma lucidum, flowers and leaves, melons and fruits, etc.;
The poems are very rare, and the petals of the peonies painted mostly have white edges;
The dragon pattern of the Yuan Dynasty has a small head, a thin neck, a long body, three or four claws, a ridge on the back, and mostly grid-like scales, which are strong and fierce.
The auxiliary decorations are mostly curly grass, lotus petals, ancient coins, sea water, fretwork, clouds, banana leaves, etc.
The shape of the lotus petal pattern is like a "braces", and Taoist miscellaneous treasures are often painted in the lotus petals;
Ruyi cloud patterns often depict the Eight Monsters of the Sea, broken lotus flowers, entwined flowers, and third-order clouds;
The middle stem of the banana leaf is solid and mainly filled with green material;
The sea pattern is a combination of thick and thin lines.