Chen Wenzhe has made various tea cups and wine sets before, but those are not among the top ten famous cups in China.
It’s just that I’m not an expert and don’t know much.
Not much is known about the Lotus Cup, one of the top ten famous cups.
Lotus Cup, also known as "Lotus Cup", first appeared in the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
The inner and outer walls of this kind of utensil are decorated with exquisite lotus petal patterns.
Many famous kilns in the Song Dynasty were fired, such as Ding kiln, Jingzhen kiln, Cizhou kiln, Jun kiln, Yaozhou kiln, etc.
Lotus petal-like patterns were carved inside or outside. In the Song Dynasty, lotus cups were made by carving, printing, shaping and painting.
Engraving is most common in Ding kiln wares; printing is most common in Ding kiln, jdz kiln and Yaozhou kiln;
Shaping, that is, shaping the mouth edge into a lotus shape with sharp edges, was the first creation of Jun kiln;
The painting is to use black glaze to draw lotus petals on the white ground outside the cup, or to draw lotus leaves and lotus flowers on the inside, which is the style of Cizhou Kiln.
Most of them have an open mouth, rounded lips, slightly curved abdominal wall, and pie-shaped feet.
There is a convex string pattern on the outer edge of the lip, and three layers of six-petal upward lotus pattern are carved on the outer belly. Usually, the outer edge is covered with blue and white glaze.
There are many styles of this kind of cup, such as the secret-color porcelain that Chen Wenzhe received before, which is a tall lotus covered bowl.
To be honest, it is also a lotus cup.
Also, a suction cup that Chen Wenzhe made before was also a lotus cup.
The "Pastel Lotus Suction Cup" from the Qing Dynasty also has a name called "Guangxu Pastel Taihu Qiucao Cup". In this way, many people should know what a lotus cup is.
In addition to these familiar cups, Chen Wenzhe has never made them before, and there are many cups that he has even heard of.
For example, the dragon head cup, as the name suggests, must be decorated with a dragon.
In fact, the real dragon hand cup is one of the very popular cup styles in the Tang Dynasty, and is mostly made of Tang Sancai ware.
The body of the Dragon Head Cup is often embossed into the shape of a dragon's head, with the dragon's eye as the finishing touch. Such a graceful vessel can be called an outstanding work of Tang Sancai.
It turns out that Chen Wenzhe specializes in making Tang Sancai cups. Although he has never made Tang Sancai cups, it is certainly not difficult to make them now.
But think about it, no matter how strange the Tang Sancai cup looks!
In 1988, three Tang tombs were discovered in Qianying Village, Cangxian County.
Due to its age and theft, not many cultural relics were unearthed during subsequent cleanup and excavations.
But one of the three-color cups was ingeniously made and had a unique shape, which attracted the attention of experts and is now on display in the historical exhibition hall on the second floor of the Cangzhou Museum.
This three-color cup is coated with three-color glaze on the inside and outside. The outside has a white base with ocher and green colors in between. The front end of the cup is upturned and the bottom is flat.
The body of the cup is embossed in the shape of a dragon's head, with eyes wide open and its mouth open as if to spit water. The water column rolls up to form a cup handle, which is cleverly connected to the mouth of the cup.
The edges of the mouth are stamped in the shape of dragon scales, which is natural and vivid.
Although the cup body has been partially repaired, the overall shape is realistic and richly decorated, vaguely showing the charm of the prosperous Tang Dynasty.
If you look carefully at this three-color cup, you will be attracted by its unique shape.
As we all know, the traditional cups in my country are mostly without handles, with regular cup bodies and not many decorations.
This three-color cup not only uses a dragon head as the cup body and a water column as the cup handle, but also has an exaggerated shape.
After research, it was actually influenced by the Western "Laitong" cup.
The "Laitong" cup is essentially a horn-shaped cup, very similar to a horn cup, and was mainly popular in ancient West Asia and Europe.
"Laitong" is a transliteration. It was originally a cup made of animal horns.
Later, it developed into a horn-shaped cup body made of gold, silver and other materials.
The bottom of the cup is decorated in the shape of an animal head, and has a unique shape of taking a small sip of wine.
Westerners believe that the "Laitong" cup can be filled with sacred wine, so it is regarded as a sacred object.
When drinking, the wine is poured from a small mouth at the bottom, and the drinker must drink it all in one gulp to show respect for God.
Later, the "Laitong" cup was introduced to our country along the Silk Road, which also influenced the cup shape in our country.
A national treasure-level cultural relic collected by the Xishan History Museum - an agate cup inlaid with gold animal heads from the Tang Dynasty is a typical representative of this type of cup.
The Tang Dynasty was a dynasty with unprecedented economic and cultural prosperity in my country, with close and frequent cultural exchanges between China and the West.
While Chinese civilization influences neighboring countries and the West, our country also actively absorbs the essence of foreign civilizations as nutrients to further build the broad compatibility and brilliance of Chinese civilization.
A three-color dragon-headed cup from the Cangzhou Museum has the same shape as the first-class three-color dragon-headed cup unearthed from the family tomb of Li Tai (the fourth son of Emperor Taizong Li Shimin of the Tang Dynasty) in Sy City.
These two three-color cups both absorb the style of the Western "Laitong" cup and combine it with the shape of the Chinese totem-dragon.
At the same time, the splendid decoration method of Tang Sancai is used to vividly reflect the exotic style of combining Chinese and Western styles.
For such a classic thing, Chen Wenzhe couldn't help but make a few.
Of course, the three-color tri-color paintings of the Tang Dynasty were made just for viewing. What really matters is practicality, which is porcelain cups.
After the Tang Dynasty, in the Song Dynasty, the porcelain industry became more developed, and the dragon head cups of this period were different.
When watching costume movies and TV dramas, we will see scenes like this.
Ordinary people or soldiers at war mostly use bowls to drink wine, while nobles or people with a certain status use exquisite drinking vessels such as hon, jue, jugs, and gongs.
Over thousands of years, the evolution of wine vessels has become increasingly rich.
Now at the Xuanhe Ceramics Museum in Yuzhou, Nanhe Province, there is an eight-way dragon-headed cup from the Song Dynasty, which is said to be a drinking vessel exclusively used by women in the Song Dynasty.
This eight-sided dragon-headed cup from the Song Dynasty has an octagonal rim, so it is called the eight-sided dragon-headed cup.
It has an open mouth, straight walls, an adducted belly, oblique belly, and a flat bottom. There is a dragon head handle on one side of the belly.
The cup is covered with a green glaze, the glaze surface has fine flakes, the glaze is uniform, and the texture is delicate.
Why is it said that the eight-sided dragon-headed cup in the Song Dynasty was not a drinking vessel used by men?
Because, judging from the handle of the cup, it is a faucet, and it is small and delicate.
When holding a cup, only a woman's slender fingers are suitable for holding it.
It would obviously be inappropriate for a man to drink from such a small cup!
It can be seen from this that this kind of wine glass is most likely a drinking vessel specially designed for women.
During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, people inherited the wine culture of the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
Whether it is the shape of the wine vessel, the decorative patterns of the wine vessel, or the drinking customs, they all absorbed the profound cultural heritage of the previous generation.
This eight-sided dragon-headed cup from the Song Dynasty was collected locally in Yuzhou a few years ago!
Later, cultural relics experts confirmed that this eight-sided dragon-headed cup from the Song Dynasty should be the work of a Yuzhou folk kiln.
Judging from the shape and characteristics of this eight-sided dragon-headed cup from the Song Dynasty, the production process is relatively complicated.
Especially the dragon head is lifelike. The dragon's mouth, beards, head, and horns on the small dragon head are all very vivid.
At the same time, the dragon head is completed separately, and then glued together with the eight-sided cup body.
In addition, the eight-sided dragon-headed cup from the Song Dynasty is also considered to be the top grade of Jun kiln bean green glaze.
This kind of Jun kiln bean celadon glaze porcelain exists in relatively small quantities, and its glaze color is similar to that of the Longquan kiln in the south, but it is earlier than the Longquan kiln of the Southern Song Dynasty.