The first thousand five hundred and sixty-seven chapters
From the late Edo period to the Meiji period in Japan, it was the heyday and history of Japan's export of porcelain, but after that, it was the world of Chinese Imari.
Chinese Imari is the European name for the Imari-style porcelain produced in Jingde Town, China. The reason is that the Chinese porcelain industry gradually became formalized after the wars in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. The Qing government opened the door to the outside world in the 22nd year of Kangxi after eliminating the anti-Qing forces along the coast.
Maritime ban, expansion of foreign trade exchanges, resumption of porcelain exports...
In response to the European market and aesthetic needs, Jingde Town used the Imari style as a reference, using underglaze blue and white, overglaze alum red, and real gold to outline the porcelain. The porcelain with Chinese traditional decorations returned to the European market, opening up its relationship with Japan.
The prelude to Imari's competition.
After a short period of market competition, Chinese Imari-style porcelain has completely won in terms of porcelain quality, glaze, painting skills, variety, price, integrity, etc. This undoubtedly dealt a fatal blow to Japan's export of porcelain.
The Japanese porcelain industry was beset by external difficulties, unable to fight, and was unable to recover. It finally withdrew from the European market in 1757. At this time, Jingde Town had more skillfully mastered Western painting techniques, and new pastel porcelain with greater European market potential was ready to go.
Subsequently, China's export porcelain stopped firing in the Imari style in keeping with the times, and the mainstream turned to export painted porcelain with brighter colors and more magnificent splendor, which also brought Jingdezhen porcelain into the era of overglaze colored porcelain.
With the development of China's porcelain trade, in order to ensure that the trade orders are delivered on time with quality and quantity, and to accurately draw the patterns required in Europe, Jingde Town will combine the semi-finished products of the underglaze high-temperature color process with the plain porcelain.
It was shipped to Yangcheng and a coloring factory was opened to complete the low-temperature coloring process.
As an important port for foreign trade, Yangcheng is home to merchant ships, and countries such as Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France have successively set up trade institutions.
The convenient business and trade conditions have enabled some domestic commercial banks to directly sign orders with foreign businessmen, and also created extremely favorable development conditions for "Guangcai", which is named after the place.
With its mature artistic style, Guangcai entered the prosperous export stage during the Qianlong period and became famous at home and abroad.
Looking back at Imari porcelain from the early 17th century to the second half of the 18th century, there are three main types of production areas. The first type is made in Imari, Japan, and mainly includes blue and white, multicolored and blue and white multicolored gold-painted varieties.
Japanese Imari ware is good at using glaze painting techniques: gold, vermilion, maroon, iron red, dark blue, emerald green, brown color, coral glaze, jet black and other color glaze painting techniques.
According to the origin of its decoration, it can be roughly divided into Japanese national styles, with Japanese character costumes and ukiyo-e style being the most representative. Japanese decorations such as flowers, landscapes, and animals are also common;
The Chinese style mainly imitates the shapes and patterns of Jingdezhen wares, and is also influenced by the Chinese "Tang Poetry and Painting Manual" which was introduced to Japan in the ten years around 1634. Japan used the Jingdezhen decorative blueprint and the painting pattern as copies to directly transplant or learn from porcelain decoration.
Strong traditional Chinese style;
European custom-made wares and patterns, such as: Greek mythology "centaur and half horse pattern", European beer (kettle) cups, five sets of Dutch seasoning bottle trays, the trademark of the Dutch East India Company...
Judging from Japan's Imari firing process, kiln-making porcelain technology lags behind China's. Because of the low refractory resistance of porcelain clay, lower softening point, and narrow firing range, the rate of scraps and defective products is high, especially the deformation of the utensils.
The bottom collapse phenomenon is very serious. Although the craftsmen used the support nailing process to make up for the technical defects, there are still burn marks on the bottom of the plate.
Judging from the body glaze, because the quality of Japanese porcelain clay is not white enough, although the body is fine and hard, the color is slightly darker, and the base of the porcelain glaze is yellow.
The "Kakiemon style" period products are known as "milky white", so it is easy to identify the Japanese Imari plate by looking at the glaze and bottom residue.
The Chinese Imari style is naturally produced in Jingde Town, China. China's exported ceramics have conquered the world and influenced the development of the world's porcelain industry. In the past, European aristocrats regarded Chinese exported porcelain as luxury goods, mostly used for display and display.
, has entered ordinary people's homes.
It covers almost everything in daily life, involving: daily necessities, daily tableware, sanitary ware, fireplace decoration and many other fields, including: tea boxes, milk cans, shaving trays, spittoons, cane handles and other varieties.
Among them, high-end custom-made porcelain and medallion porcelain are the most exquisitely fired. It is reported that foreign researchers have divided the Chinese Ming and Qing export porcelain collected in the British Museum into: "Ming blue and white porcelain (1520-1644), early Qing blue and white porcelain and colored porcelain (1644-1644)
1722), Sheng Qing porcelain (17-1800), European colored Chinese trade porcelain.
Among them, Shengqing porcelain is divided into nine categories: European-style porcelain, British landscapes, religious themes, ancient Greek and Roman mythology series, Rococo patterns, shapes and techniques derived from European utensils, British aristocratic tableware, and European aristocratic tableware.
Later, there were rising stars in Europe, driven by business interests. Following Japan's Imari, by the middle of the 18th century, France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands and other countries had successively obtained the secrets of the manufacturing process and formula of Jingdezhen porcelain, and they rushed to build it.
Factory production.
Since they were in the early stage of novices, they started with the "Clark Porcelain" of Jingde Zhenming in the late Ming Dynasty without exception, and imitated the production based on Chinese and Japanese decorative patterns, and gradually expanded to daily tableware, daily necessities and other utensils.
For example: the blue and white vitriol red beer mug produced by Bowes Porcelain Factory in London, UK is an example. It is worth mentioning that it was they who invented the "ternary formula" and successfully fired hard porcelain.
It is different. As it develops, its patterns and painting styles gradually become completely different from those of Jingdezhen export porcelain. It shows the local European cultural style and is worthy of praise!
But no matter what, among the Imari porcelain, the Imari produced in China is the most valuable. Han Kongque was optimistic about this pair of Imari porcelain, so naturally he wanted to ask the price first.
After asking, Han Peacock smiled when he heard the price was three hundred and fifty dollars.
"Thirty-five dollars. I just saw this kind of plate on the street over there. The boss's price is definitely not high." Han Peacock smiled slyly.
The stall owner took a serious look at Han Peacock and said, "Don't lie to me, each of these large dishes in the store will cost no less than three hundred dollars."
Han Peacock smiled and said, "Really? Can they sell it for three hundred dollars?"
The stall owner shrugged and said, "It will be sold one day."
Han Peacock smiled, it seems that foreign antique dealers also understand the principle of not opening for three years and staying open for three years.
Han Kongque said: "One hundred dollars for these two plates is the most reasonable price."
After saying that, Han Kongque stood up. It seemed that the boss did not agree, so Han Kongque had no intention of buying.
The boss hesitated for a moment and said: "One hundred and twenty US dollars, converted into RMB, is less than 400 yuan, which should be within your affordability."
Han Peacock laughed and said: "Boss, you haven't been to China, have you? Do you even know the price of such a large market in China? If you take it home at this price, I will have to pay for the travel expenses."
The boss also smiled: "Don't lie to me. The low-end antiques we have here are more expensive in your country. Besides, you usually collect the ones you like, so you have to bear the travel expenses yourself."
Han Peacock said helplessly: "Okay, who makes me like it? This is one hundred and twenty dollars."
Han Kongque flipped his hand and took out the money and handed it to the stall owner. At this time, Jin Yao and Mu Ling immediately stepped forward, each picked up a plate and looked at it carefully.
"Is this Imari's market?" Mu Ling asked curiously.
Han Kongque said as he walked: "Yes, and it is China's Imari. You two are studying Chinese painting, so you should be able to see the style of it, right?"
Mu Ling frowned and said: "This is a combination of Chinese and Western, right? Besides, the Japanese are very capable of imitating, so we can't assume that this is the Chinese Imari, right?"
Unexpectedly, he actually bought a pair of Imari large plates this time. Han Kongque was very happy, and naturally he didn't mind giving some advice to Mu Ling.
Appraisal is like this. It’s not difficult to prove it, but if you don’t tell the final result, you will feel that you are in the clouds and can’t figure out the edge no matter how you look at it.
"China Imari" and "Japan Imari" have similar shapes, and both pursue a resplendent effect in decoration. They also use the consecration decoration that is common in "Imari" export porcelain.
However, the Chinese consecration depicts characters with Chinese characteristics, which is rarely seen in Japanese "Imari" export porcelain during this period.
Japanese porcelain is usually painted with Japanese figures, which shows that Chinese porcelain workers also made some changes when imitating the Japanese "Golden Hand" style, and did not just copy it blindly.
"Is there a lot of this kind of Imari porcelain?" After no longer wondering whether it was Chinese Imari porcelain, Mu Ling asked again.
Han Kongque said: "Of course there are many, but you have to know the situation at that time. These two Imari large plates should be fine products from Jingde Town in the early Qing Dynasty. Among the porcelain produced at that time, there were very few large plates and large bottles. Things are rare.
Because they are expensive, the prices are naturally different.
As I said just now, during the Shunzhi and Kangxi periods of the early Qing Dynasty, the world was dominated by Japanese Imaris, and domestically produced Imaris were even rarer, not to mention the Imaris exported abroad."
Chinese porcelain has always been of high quality and low price, but it depends on the type of porcelain. Even in China, the firing rate of some high-quality large porcelain is not high, so the price remains high.
In addition, these two large Imari figures are not mass goods, and they were exported abroad during the heyday of Imari in Japan. At that time, it was definitely a critical period of competing for the market with the Japanese, so the quality cannot be bad, so this
The price of two large Imari plates is even more immeasurable.
If it were not for this reason, China's Imari would not be able to upgrade to a large villa, or even a small house. This is because the number of such porcelain exported was too much.
Because the imitations of Chinese porcelain at that time were of high quality and low price, over time, Japanese porcelain could not compete with Chinese porcelain, and finally withdrew from the international market in 1757.
In contrast, Chinese porcelain exported 11 million pieces of porcelain to Sweden in just the five years from 1750 to 1755. (To be continued.)