Blue and white porcelain
From Claypedia
"Blue and white wares" (in Chinese 青花 qīng-huā, literally "Blue flowers") designate white pottery and porcelain decorated under the glaze with a blue pigment, generally cobalt oxide. The decoration is commonly applied by hand, by stencilling or by transfer-printing, though other methods of application have also been used.
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Origin
The very technique of cobalt blue decorations on white background seems to have been invented in the Middle-East in the 9th century through decorative experimentation on white ware.[2] Cobalt blue pigments were excavated from local mines in central Iran from the 9th century, and then were exported as a raw material to China.[3] The blue-and-white technique was fully developed in China with porcelain technology in the 14th century.[2] On some occasions, Chinese blue and white wears also incorporated Islamic designs, as in the case of some Mamluk brass works which were converted into blue and white Chinese porcelain designs.[3]
The first Chinese blue and white wares were as early as the ninth century in Henan province, China; although only shards have been discovered. Tang period blue-and-white is even rarer than Song blue-and-white and was unknown before 1985.[4] The Tang pieces are not porcelain however, but rather earthenwares with greenish white slip, using cobalt blue pigments which probably originated in the Middle-East.[4] Several of these shards, found since 1985, incorporate Middle-Eastern designs.[4] The only three pieces of complete "Tang blue and white" in the world were recovered from Indonesian Belitung shipwreck in 1998 and later sold to Singapore.[5]
In the early fourteenth century mass-production of fine, translucent, blue and white porcelain started at Jingdezhen, sometimes called the porcelain capital of China. Chinese blue and white porcelain was once-fired: after the porcelain body was dried, decorated with refined cobalt-blue pigment mixed with water and applied using a brush, coated with a clear glaze and fired at high temperature. Production of blue and white wares has continued at Jingdezhen to this day. Blue and white porcelain made at Jingdezhen probably reached the height of its technical excellence during the reign of the Kangxi emperor of the Qing Dynasty (reigned 1661 to 1722).
Influences on Islamic pottery
Right image: Stone-paste dish with grape design, Iznik, Turkey, 1550-70. British Museum.
Chinese blue and white ware became extremely popular in the Middle-East from the 14th century, where both Islamic types and Chinese types coexisted.[2]
From the 13th century, Chinese pictorial designs, such as flying cranes, dragons and lotus flowers also started to appear in the ceramic productions of the Near-East, especially in Syria and Egypt.[3]
Chinese porcelain of the 14th or 15th century was transmitted to the Middle-East and the Near East, and especially to the Ottoman Empire either through gifts or through war booty. Chinese designs were extremely influential with the pottery manufacturers at Iznik, Turkey. The Ming "grape" design in particular was highly popular and was extensively reproduced under the Ottoman Empire.[3]
Influences on European porcelains
By the beginning of the 17th century Chinese blue and white porcelain was being exported directly to Europe. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Oriental blue and white porcelain was highly prized in Europe and America and sometimes enhanced by fine silver and gold mounts, it was collected by kings and princes.
The European manufacture of porcelain started at Meissen in Germany in 1707. The early wares were strongly influenced by Chinese and other Oriental porcelains and an early pattern was blue onion, which is still in production at the Meissen factory today. Early English porcelain wares were also influenced by Chinese wares and when, for example, the production of porcelain started at Worcester, nearly forty years after Meissen, Oriental blue and white wares provided the inspiration for much of the decoration used. Hand-painted and transfer-printed wares were made at Worcester and at other early English factories in a style known as Chinoiserie. Many other European factories followed this trend. At Delft, in The Netherlands, blue and white ceramics taking their designs from Chinese export porcelains made for the Dutch market were made in large numbers throughout the 17th Century. Blue and white Delftware was itself extensively copied by factories in other European countries, including England, where it is known as English Delftware
Patterns
The plate shown in the illustration (right) is decorated with the famous willow pattern and was probably made at a factory in the English county of Staffordshire. Such is the persistence of the willow pattern that it is difficult to date the piece shown with any precision; it is possibly quite recent but similar wares have been produced by English factories in huge numbers over long periods and are still being made today. The willow pattern, said to tell the sad story of a pair of star-crossed lovers, was an entirely European design, though one that was strongly influenced in style by design features borrowed from Chinese export porcelains of the 18th Century. The willow pattern was, in turn, copied by Chinese potters, but with the decoration hand painted rather than transfer-printed.
See also
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Blue_and_white_porcelain Blue and white porcelain] |
- Chinese ceramics
- Blanc-de-Chine
- Chinoiserie
- Meissen porcelain
- Delftware
- English Delftware
- Joseon white porcelain
- Willow pattern
References
- ↑ Met description
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Medieval Islamic civilization: an encyclopedia by Josef W. Meri, Jere L. Bacharach p.143 [1]
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Notice of British Museum "Islamic Art Room" permanent exhibit.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Song blue-and-white was rare enough, but Tang blue-and-white was unheard of" in Chinese glazes: their origins, chemistry, and recreation Nigel Wood p.97 [2]
- ↑ curating the oceans and Belintung shipwreck
