Gao Lian was particularly insightful in his choice of porcelain basins.
If there are five-color painted flowers, white embroidered flowers, and painted flowers, the square and round basins are beautiful with cloud board feet, and there are also octagonal round basins and hexagonal ring basins, which are the most fixed styles, but there are no long basins.
Most of the Guan Ge kilns are round, and there are also those with ribbons and rings, but square ones are rare.
For example, Qingdong porcelain and Junzhou kiln have mostly round ones and few long basins.
Square pots of water chestnuts and sunflowers are better made, but they can only be used to grow cattails.
The style of porcelain used for furnishings is often significantly different depending on the identity of the owner.
For example, literati pursue elegance and refinement, while religious places pursue solemnity and appropriateness.
The palace furnishings emphasized nobility and magnificence, so the porcelain used in the palace was often made of pure colors, bright and bright colors, and the craftsmanship was particularly exquisite. The surface was often painted with patterns such as dragons and phoenixes to show its rank.
Among the writing utensils that first meet practical functions, many literati also prefer porcelain utensils: pen holders, pen holders, inkstones, printing boxes, basins, wash basins, ink beds, inkstone drops, pen licks, painting jars...
In Gao Lian's calligraphy desk display, the brush grid and brush washers are porcelain.
"There is a long table in the studio, an ancient inkstone, an old bronze water ink, an old kiln pen grid, a spotted bamboo pen holder, an old kiln pen washer, a paste bucket, a water bottle, and a copper and stone paperweight."
There are especially many porcelain works among brush washers. Both Gao Lian and Wen Zhenheng cited the Guan Kiln, Ge Kiln, Ding Kiln, Longquan Kiln, Xuan Kiln and other exquisite works in brush washers. Bowl basin washers and Pankou Washers are particularly popular.
Before the Song Dynasty, porcelain inkstones were especially popular because porcelain inkstones could withstand high temperatures. They often came in the form of warm inkstones, that is, inkstones with added heating equipment.
Even in cold winter, this design prevents the ink from becoming stagnant.
These study utensils often have fresh and elegant glaze colors, or depict some classic legends, stories, and character scenes to show the aesthetic taste and cultivation of the literati.
Some of the most novel and unique technologies are often used in the production of study utensils.
For example, raw porcelain flourished during the Qianlong period, leaving behind masterpieces such as imitation stone-grain glaze and wood-grain glaze.
Furthermore, although the furniture of the Ming and Qing Dynasties was mainly made of wood, porcelain did not fall behind in the field of seats.
With its unique texture and charm, porcelain piers have become treasured objects by literati, ladies and even common people.
Among them, one of the classics is also collected in the Dahai City Museum, which is an embroidered pier with blue and white pine, bamboo and plum patterns.
Although the earliest known porcelain mound was unearthed from a Sui tomb in Anyang, Henan.
However, "Yin Liu Zhai Talks about Porcelain" has already mentioned that porcelain with flowers has gradually become popular in the Song Dynasty.
In Su Dongpo's poem "Dingzhou Flower Porcelain Carved with Red Jade", Renzong summoned the bachelor Wang Gui and set up a purple flower podium.
The craftsmanship of porcelain piers gradually matured during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and a small number of enamel works emerged in the Ming dynasty.
This is a kind of hard pottery produced in the middle and late Yuan Dynasty, which evolved from colored glaze, but has richer colors.
Looking at the life aesthetics described by the ancients, it is always inseparable from the participation of porcelain.
It can be both elegant and magnificent, it can be bright and eye-catching in a conspicuous place, and it can also be full of subtle fragrance in the corner...
Since we want to imitate, we must start from the earliest imitation. Of course, the earliest one was discovered in the Sui Dynasty, but the craftsmanship in that period was very poor.
The production of porcelain piers that can be known now is the most classic in the Southern Song Dynasty.
Among the celadon specimens from the Southern Song Dynasty, there is a "pier" of official kiln porcelain!
"Achievements Exhibition" held by the Southern Song Dynasty Official Kiln Museum in Hangzhou displays five ceramic artifacts unearthed from the Tanxia kiln site on the outskirts of the Southern Song Dynasty Official Kiln in Hangzhou in 1985.
After careful inspection, the body glaze is very different from the common understanding of the Southern Song Dynasty official kiln porcelain.
The exteriors of these porcelains are thickly glazed, greenish-yellow in color, with open flakes, and the body is mainly reddish-brown.
The body where the part joins with the glaze is black and gray, which is a typical thick body and thick glaze.
Combined with the traces of glaze traces, the vertical relationship between the top and bottom during firing of the convex arc-shaped vertical components can be judged.
The middle glaze flows and accumulates, forming three thicker raised string patterns.
There are no decorative patterns on the back, because the artifacts were severely broken and damaged, and it was not possible to identify what type of artifacts they were.
Judging from the shape, size and dimensions, it is obviously different from the existing hollowed-out vessels such as long-necked bottles and bottle-type stoves from the official kilns of the Southern Song Dynasty.
In the past, no scholar has conducted systematic research on this.
However, judging from their characteristics, they are most likely to come from the same type of artifacts.
After reviewing a large amount of archaeological, documentary and image data, it is speculated that these five Southern Song Dynasty official kiln porcelain components may be "pier" components made of composite imitation rattan, bamboo, wood and other materials.
The three chord patterns that stand out after glazing are imitations of the key reinforcement nodes of the pier, and may play a role in imitation, beautification or reinforcement.
The so-called pier is a kind of seat that became popular with the development of high-sitting living style.
Later, it gradually became a type of classical furniture in my country. Tracing back to the origin of piers, Guo Pu of Jin Dynasty commented in "Shiqiu", Volume 7 of "Erya", saying: "Today, the high piles in the east of the Yangtze River are called piers."
Dun is the common word for Dun, so the original meaning of Dun is a mound of earth.
A "pier" type seat before the Song Dynasty, the "Acrobatic Picture" mural in the Han tomb in Liaoyang depicts an acrobat performing on a thin-waisted round pier.
This kind of utensil is considered to be one of the relatively early pier-shaped seats discovered so far.
In fact, utensils of this shape have appeared as early as the Warring States Period.
It was not originally used as a seat, but as a cage for fishing and rabbits.
That is what is said in "Zhuangzi: Foreign Things": "The reason why the trap is on the fish, and when it catches the fish, it forgets the trap; the reason why the hoof is on the rabbit, and when it catches the rabbit, it forgets the hoof; the reason why the speaker is concerned, and when it is satisfied, it forgets the words."
Because there is not much difference between the two, they are collectively called "Quanti", also known as "Quantai".
In the Tang Dynasty, Li Yanshou's "Southern History" Volume 80 "Hou Jing" recorded: "He went up to the hoof and said: 'I am speaking for the public'. He ordered Jing to leave the table and asked him to sing sutras."
The Tang Dynasty Yao Silian's "Book of Liang" Volume 56 "Biography of Hou Jing" records: "There is always a beech bed and a hoof on the bed, and you can sit with your boots hanging down."
Later, this type of utensil was used for smoking baskets for baking clothes and quilts on charcoal pots.
With the popularization of tall seats and changes in people's living habits, the way of living in ancient my country gradually changed from sitting on the floor to sitting with one's feet down, and most furniture also transitioned from low to high.
In addition, with the spread of Buddhist culture to the east, a round pier was popular from the Wei, Jin and Tang dynasties. This kind of sitting utensil, which is similar to a drum with large ends and a thin waist in the middle, was mostly made of bamboo and rattan.
From the shape point of view, most of the early piers were thin-waisted and drum-shaped, but in the late Northern Wei Dynasty they were still slender, which should be related to the aesthetics and admiration of the time.
Some of the round piers not only retain the shape of the smoke cage, but also have patterns on the surface that symbolize bamboo and rattan weaving.
For example, there are Buddhist grotto statues from the Northern Wei Dynasty in Yungang, Longmen and Tianlong Mountain in Datong, stone line carvings unearthed from the stone chamber tombs of the Northern Qi Dynasty in Yidu, Qilu, and bodhisattvas sitting on rattan piers in the Northern Zhou Dynasty.
In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, there were many changes, but due to the influence of the Buddhist lotus platform, the waist-drum-style sitting pier continued to be used.
For example, the coffin wall reliefs were unearthed from the Sui Dynasty Yu Hong's tomb in Wangguo Village, Xishan, the three-color dressing-dressing female seated figurines were unearthed from the Tang Dynasty tomb in Wangjia Tomb, Chang'an, and there are similar piers in the Tang Dynasty murals at the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang.