From this part of the Xixia text alone, we can say that this batch of Xixia ancient porcelain is the treasure of the Xixia Kingdom and the historical witness of the Dangxiang nation in the history of our country. In addition to its own aesthetic and artistic value, it also has profound cultural connotations. It is
Later generations interpret the golden key of the Xixia Kingdom.
Xixia porcelain was influenced by the advanced craftsmanship of Cizhou kiln, Yaozhou kiln and Shanxi porcelain kilns. Coupled with the integration of ethnic groups and economic and cultural exchanges, and the intervention of advanced porcelain-making technology from the south, Xixia porcelain blended the essence of northern and southern cultures and gradually became a wonder in the ceramic world.
At present, Xixia porcelain has gradually attracted world attention, especially Xixia white porcelain and carved porcelain, which have become treasures of ceramic art in China and even the world.
Of course, in addition to this batch of cultural relics with profound cultural connotations, the ceramic art of Xixia is also very exquisite, especially the wine sets of Xixia.
Drinking is already a culture among Xixia people, so don’t think that drinking vessels are just practical ones. In fact, they also have extremely high cultural connotations.
Among the porcelain kilns that Han Kongque found, one was specialized in firing wine sets. Of course, there was also a gold and silverware workshop that was also specialized in making wine sets. However, Han Kongque paid more attention to Xixia porcelain than to gold and silverware.
The wine utensils of Xixia are so exquisite, the wine containers are beautiful, and the drinking utensils are unique. It can be said that Xixia wine utensils have reached a peak of that era.
Han Peacock knew that the winemaking industry in Xixia was controlled by the government, and that the Dangxiang ethnic group, the main ethnic group in Xixia, had gradually moved closer to farming civilization from nomadism in the alpine regions, and it could be said that it was a common consumer product for this nation in life.
When Xixia was founded, wine always accompanied the growth and demise of this small kingdom.
Therefore, among the porcelain discovered later, wine vessels accounted for a large part. Just this batch of porcelain was enough for Han Kongque to build a large museum for storage and exhibition.
At first, Han Kongque did not pay special attention to this batch of porcelain. Later, because of the inscriptions, Han Kongque carefully inspected many wine vessels. Only then did he discover that in ancient Xixia, they valued wine vessels very much.
Moreover, Yu Shan also discovered that the wine vessels here are very complete. According to the broad categories, they are divided into wine storage vessels and drinking vessels. According to the artistic value, they are further divided into practical vessels and sacrificial vessels.
Xixia wine containers mainly include urns, bottles, cans, jars, etc., which are easy to store, transport, and carry, and can prevent and reduce evaporation.
Han Peacock found too many wine vessels here, all kinds of them. For example, the small-mouth bottle before was actually a wine vessel. Why was there an inscription on such a small-mouth bottle?
This still needs to be analyzed from the functions of these wine vessels and the people who use them. Of course, from this point of view, it is not just a small-mouth bottle that can have inscriptions, so later Han Kongque discovered that many wine vessels
It has an inscription on it.
Let’s talk about the urn first. The urn is a large vessel, tall, with a small diameter and a large abdominal diameter. It is generally more than 40 centimeters high.
Common urns include four-ear and double-ear urns, while there are fewer urns without ties, because urns with ties are easier to carry and move.
Because the urn has a large belly and a small mouth, it is inconvenient to hold solid objects, but it is convenient to store liquids. Most of the beautifully crafted urns are used to hold wine.
Therefore, the urns found here are all filled with fine wine, which can be regarded as an unexpected gain for Han Peacock.
However, Han Kongque did not open it. After all, he was still in the ancient tomb. Even if there was fine wine inside, Han Kongque had no intention of drinking it.
Compared with urns, jars have a larger diameter and are not as tall as urns. These are actually wine vessels used to store wine on a large scale, or simply wine storage vessels used by civilians.
What is here is certainly not an ordinary wine storage container, so the wine inside is certainly not simple.
It can be said that all the wine storage containers discovered by Han Kongque here should have contained wine, but some of them were not well preserved, so they evaporated completely.
But even so, the amount of wine discovered by Han Kongque this time was also an astronomical figure.
After all, whether they are jars or bottles, there are a lot of them, and the volumes of these two wine storage containers are not small. Each jar and each jar contains a large amount of wine, which makes Han Peacock's
The harvest this time has become much greater.
Of course, the most widely used bottles for Xixia wine are plum bottles, and these plum bottles also contain wine. However, after all, the plum bottles are not as big as the urns, so the quantity of wine is less.
In addition, plum vases are more difficult to bake than urns and urns, so there are not many of them. Of course, this is also determined by the status of plum vases in Xixia.
In Xixia, plum vase is also called sutra vase. Its main function is to hold wine during Buddhist activities, that is, talking about Buddhism, chanting sutras or writing sutras, so it is called "sutra vase".
Xixia sutra bottles are divided into wide-mouth bottles and small-mouth bottles. The small-mouth bottle with the inscription that Han Kongque paid special attention to just now is the sutra bottle. It is a sutra bottle used by living Buddhas to hold wine, so it is normal for there to be inscriptions on it.
of.
In Xixia, they used to call the larger-diameter "jar" and the smaller-diameter "plum vase".
Of course, there are also various kinds of sutra vases. Among the many "sutra vases" in Xixia, they are divided into plain vases and carved vases. Plain vases are mainly black and tea powder glaze, while carved vases are also
White.
The "Sutra Bottle" with human figures discovered by Han Peacock can be said to be the best among the Western Xia wine vessels. There are two types of bottles with this type of human figures, one with characters with beards and the other with characters without beards.
of.
The bottle with a bearded figure is known to have a slightly broken mouth. The glaze is white with bluish tint and the glaze is thin. The main image is a bearded drinker with a full face, bald hair, slightly drunk, half sitting, with his head
Auspicious clouds arise from above.
The main pattern of the other bottle is the same, but the difference is that the character does not have a beard.
There is another type of utensil that is between the wine container and the drinking vessel, which is the flat pot. Utensils like the flat pot are most suitable for carrying on the road and are a common and necessary item on the horseback of nomadic people.
Previously, Han Kongque also discovered a white porcelain flat pot with very fine craftsmanship. The flat pot was 20 centimeters long and 17 centimeters wide. The flat pot not only had decals and printing techniques, but also had inscriptions in Chinese and Xixia, so
It is definitely the best among wine vessels.
In addition to the above-mentioned wine storage vessels, there are also drinking vessels. Xixia drinking vessels come in different sizes, with large ones like bowls and small ones having cups, and come in various forms.
Bowls are mainly used for drinking kumis and wine. Because the alcohol content of this type of wine is low, bowls are used to drink it. This is very popular with Mongolians, so there are many such bowls.
Perhaps because drinking from bowls is very consistent with Mongolian habits, bowls definitely account for the vast majority of the large number of porcelain found by Han Kongque.
These bowls are quite special and are very different from ordinary bowls, so Han Peacock could tell at a glance that they were made in Xixia.
These bowls are different from ordinary bowls, because in Xixia, their drinking bowls are divided into general and special ones. Strictly speaking, they are porcelain bowls.
This kind of bowl-type bowl is made by pressing the rim of the porcelain outward or pulling it with your fingers when the porcelain body is being formed. There will be a groove on the rim of the mouth to form a bowl-like flow for drinking.
When this happens, the liquid in the bowl does not overflow to the surroundings. It can be said that this is a creation of the Xixia people.
The porcelain bowls of Xixia can also be divided into four categories, one is bowl style, the other is dish style, the third is bean style, and the fourth is imitation ancient copper style.
The bowl-shaped bowls of Xixia were probably inspired by burned bowls. Because the porcelain bodies of Xixia contain a lot of sand and are located in the dry desert climate zone of the northwest, they need to be dried after being made.
This is a process, and this process is the key to the success of Xixia porcelain firing.
If it is dried too much, there will be cracks in the carcass. If it is not dried properly, the humidity will be too high, and it will be deformed after entering the kiln.
Cracked utensils cannot be used after being fired, but deformed utensils can still be used.
Deformed products such as bowls and dishes were found to be crooked during use. Although they were unsightly, the soup did not leak, the drink did not spill, and the milk did not flow turbulently. Therefore, craftsmen began to bake the products for drinking.
For some utensils, after the blank is made, a gap is made on the edge, similar to the flow of a circle.
There are many such bowls in Xixia. Han Peacock found many complete kiln bowls with various glazes, but most of them were not neat and crooked. Han Peacock knew that this was related to the life of Xixia people who loved drinking and often drank milk.
Habits are related.
If you love drinking, it is easy to develop a drinking culture. For example, this kind of bowl-style wine can only drink low-alcohol wine. Of course, drinking low-alcohol wine is not only done in bowl-style wine, but also in tall glasses, and Xixia has also developed
All kinds of goblets came out.
The height of Xixia goblets ranges from 6 to 9 centimeters, with various glaze colors such as black, white, brown, and green. In this type of vessel, the foot height accounts for one-third of the total height, and the diameter of the cup mouth is proportional to
The overall height of the cup should be slightly larger, the cup foot should be exposed, and the rest of the cup should be covered with glaze.
If you drink high-alcohol wine, you must change the wine container, and you need to use wine glasses, such as earless cups and double-eared cups.
The manufacturing methods of earless cups have been found to be the same, with little difference in styles, such as a mandible mouth, a round belly, and high feet. This kind of wine cup from Xixia has a smaller sole and a small hole in the abdomen.
This small hole has two functions. First, when firing the wine cup base, the base dipped in glaze water is fired with the mouth of the cup downwards. To prevent adhesion, the rim of the mouth is not glazed, so it is a glaze.
In addition, the sole is very small, because if the sole of the foot is placed on a flat surface and fired, it will be very unstable, and because it is top-heavy, it is easy to deform or fall over.
In this way, the wine glass must be burned upside down. Since it is turned upside down, the abdomen is large and there is a lot of air stored in it. If the air is not discharged, it will expand after heating, which will rupture or deform the abdomen. This means that there must be a small hole in the abdomen.
The reason.
This is a function on the technical level of firing. Another function is that when drinking, there is a small hole in the middle called the "fair heart". (To be continued.)