The Art of Fire: Ceramics

Chinese ceramics are treasures in the treasure house of Chinese culture. All vessels made of clay and china clay (kaolin) are collectively called ceramics.

The classification of ceramics is very complicated.

If divided from the firing temperature of ceramics, it can be divided into pottery and porcelain. From the Neolithic Age to the Tang Dynasty, the utensils used in this period were all pottery. For example, the celadon from the Three Kingdoms and Jin Dynasties and the Tang Sancai from the Tang Dynasty are all called pottery.

Why not call it porcelain? Because the firing temperature is low, only about 700-800 degrees, the glaze is not hard. After the Song Dynasty, the firing temperature reached 1280℃-1400℃, and the vessels of this period were called porcelain.

According to the origin of ceramics, they can be divided into official kilns and private kilns. Those fired by the government are called official kilns, and those fired by the people themselves in earthen kilns are called folk kilns.

If divided from the kiln mouth, it can be divided into Jingdezhen kiln, Cizhou kiln, Dehua kiln, Longquan kiln, Ge kiln, Ding kiln, Jun kiln, Ru kiln, Xing kiln, Yue kiln, etc. etc., the porcelain produced at each kiln entrance has its own characteristics, so I won’t go into details here.

If divided by the type of porcelain, it can be divided into blue and white porcelain, pastel porcelain, color glazed porcelain, etc. We usually differentiate by kind.

1. Blue and White Porcelain

Jay Chou has a song called "Blue and White Porcelain". Blue and white porcelain is one of our national quintessences. It has been the well-deserved overlord of the porcelain world since its birth. Blue and white porcelain was created and fired in the Yuan Dynasty. There is a legend here.

In the Yuan Dynasty, porcelain workers in Jingdezhen used small iron knives to carve patterns on the porcelain blanks, which was labor-consuming and time-consuming, and the decorative techniques were monotonous. There was a craftsman named Zhao Xiaobao who had been trying to find a pigment suitable for painting porcelain, but to no avail. His fiancée Liao Qinghua is determined to help him find it. She followed the miners into the mountains in search of ore raw materials, but never returned. By the time Zhao Xiaobao found her, she had already frozen to death on the mountain. There was also a pile of black ore in his arms. In grief, Zhao Xiaobao ground the ore found by his fiancée into powder, mixed it into pigment, painted it on the vessel, and finally burned out the blue pattern. So people called this blue flower "blue and white" and the porcelain with this blue pattern "blue and white porcelain". This is just a beautiful legend.

Blue and white materials are actually extracted from cobalt-containing ores. When painted on white porcelain, they appear light black. After being fired at a high temperature of 1300 degrees, they can appear as blue flowers on a white background. . From then on, blue and white porcelain dominated the market for hundreds of years.

Today, with the development of the porcelain industry, blue and white materials prepared with the chemical cobalt oxide can also depict blue and white patterns. However, this chemical dye lacks coloring power, making this blue and white look very frivolous. , far from being as rich as the artworks drawn with ancient natural dyes. This also helps us identify ancient and modern blue and white porcelain.

Due to the long history and difficulty of burning paper. Currently, there are less than 300 Yuan blue and white pieces in all museums and private collections around the world.

On July 12, 2005, a Yuan blue and white "Guiguzi Descending the Mountain" was sold at Christie's London China auction for a high price of 230 million yuan.

Ten years ago, I also saw a Yuan blue and white piece of "Walking in the Snow in Search of Plum Blossoms" in the Capital Museum. In recent years, I have seen another one in the Hebei Provincial Museum. All in all, the quantity is extremely rare. But now many people don’t know the truth and often buy fake products.

In fact, the probability of encountering Yuanqinghua in the market can be described as: looking for a grain of sand in the desert, and your name will be written on the sand. Look at the odds. Last year I traveled to Jingdezhen, and every stall had a large number of imitation Yuan blue and white porcelain.

The Yongxuan period of the Ming Dynasty pushed blue and white porcelain to its peak. The imported cobalt material "Suma Li Qing" was used in the blue and white porcelain of this period to an unprecedented level. Later, there were imitations during the Yong and Qian dynasties of the Qing Dynasty, but they were far apart. They were only similar in appearance but not in spirit. Except for the Yongxuan Dynasty, except for the elegant blue and white produced by Chenghua Chuang, which is unique, the other years are not ideal.

Twenty years after the reign of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, due to social prosperity and people living and working in peace and contentment, unique five-color blue and white flowers were created. The so-called five-color blue and white means that the ink colors are divided into shades. The entire painting and even the brush strokes must reflect different ink colors, giving people a beautiful enjoyment through different levels of color difference. Kangxi's five-color blue and white porcelain is more gorgeous than Yongxuan, more elegant than Chenghua, gorgeous but not delicate, light but not beautiful, becoming another pinnacle of blue and white porcelain, which no one can match.

There is nothing special about the blue and white porcelain after this. During the Republic of China, although the blue and white porcelain painted by Wang Bu was called the blue and white porcelain, it was only an innovation in painting techniques, not in the blue and white color itself.

2. Colored porcelain

As the name suggests, it is porcelain coated with various colors. Colored porcelain includes five colors, pink colors, light crimson colors, doucai, Guangcai, enamel colors and so on.

Colorful porcelain began to be produced in the Ming Dynasty. It is characterized by rich and colorful colors. Five colors are hard colors (similar to oil paintings), and the contrast between the colors is strong and too ostentatious. Everyone felt that there was a lack of excessive color, so they began to create pastels. Pastel is a soft color (similar to gouache) and has become the mainstream among most colorful porcelains. The light crimson color that appeared later only had slight changes in tone and technique.

These colored porcelains are all glaze decorations of porcelain. The production method is to first outline the pattern on the white body porcelain, and then fill it with coloring materials and bake it.

The colorful colors are like colorful pictures. The pictures are full of strong national characteristics. There are characters based on Chinese historical stories and myths, beautiful and colorful landscapes, lifelike flowers and birds, and neat and symmetrical figures. Geometric patterns, etc., very beautiful.

After the founding of New China, porcelain factories began to use brushing and decals to improve efficiency. The brushed flowers have a print-like effect, and the decals are made by sticking glass pocket paper on them. Once burned, they stick. The most common daily necessities that people use fall into this category, lacking artistic value and being produced by machines.

Among colored porcelain, I focus on enamel.

Enamel is a raw material used for painting on copper tires in foreign countries. The raw material is very bright and attractive. During the Kangxi Dynasty, this material was painted on our porcelain.

Enamel-colored porcelain adopts Western painting methods and looks very real. Unfortunately, the raw materials can only be imported. Because they are too expensive, they cannot be popularized. It has always been only used by the royal family. In the late Qianlong period, due to the decline in national power, the firing of enamel-colored porcelain was stopped.

Therefore, enamel is very rare. There are only more than 400 pieces left in the world, which is a very rare number. On October 23, 2006, the world-renowned auction organization Sotheby's held an autumn single-item auction in Hong Kong. Among them was a "Qianlong enamel 'Gu Yuexuan' inscribed with poems, flowers, stones and golden pheasants amphora made by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. "It was sold for HK$115.48 million. You can imagine how rare it is. At present, Song Ru porcelain, Yuan blue and white jars, Ming Chenghua doucai chicken jar cups, Qing enamel color porcelain, these porcelain varieties, the auction prices are hundreds of millions.

More than ten years ago, Wang, a porcelain collector in Beijing, paid tribute several times a year, asking everywhere for enamel. Because Wang once met an old man from Zigong at an auction house in Beijing. The old man had negotiated the transfer of a small enamel bottle with an injured foot at the auction house for 1.2 million yuan. So Wang made a special trip from Beijing to inquire about enamel. Unfortunately nothing was found.

3. Color glaze

Adding some kind of oxidized metal to the glaze, and after baking, it will show a certain inherent color. This is the color glaze.

The main thing that affects the color of the glaze is the metal oxide that acts as a colorant. For example, adding iron oxide can produce green and blue porcelain; adding copper oxide can produce red porcelain. , purple, ocher-colored porcelain. It is also closely related to the firing temperature and firing atmosphere.

There is a saying in jargon that porcelain of any color can be produced according to the colors found in nature. If you visit the color-glazed porcelain in Jingdezhen, you will believe this statement is true.

Of course, the ingredients and firing of many colored glazes are very difficult. For example, "sacrificial red glaze" is said to be one treasure in a thousand kilns. Its color must be between 1300℃ and 1310℃. At 1300℃, it will burn into an ugly green or dirty purple color, but at 1310℃, the color will burn away again and turn into bluish white. The red glaze will only appear between these 10°C.

In ancient times, it was a wood kiln, and the temperature and heat depended on the naked eye observation of the fireman. It relied on experience. It is very difficult to observe a 10°C temperature difference with the naked eye. If you are not careful, it will become a waste product.

In Zigong, I once saw a sacrificial red-glazed brush wash basin and an ocher-colored red-glazed water basin that was not successfully fired. Therefore, the ancients said that if you want to be poor, burn red offerings. Now we use steam kilns and electric kilns for firing porcelain, and the temperature is completely controllable. Therefore, there are not many perfect red-glazed vessels in history and they are extremely precious.