It never occurred to anyone that the blue-and-white porcelain was a mixed-race art

Blue and white porcelain began in the Yuan Dynasty

“Vegetable sketches blue and white pen front thick and weak, the bottle of painted peonies like your first make-up”, a “blue and white porcelain”, so that many people have become interested in blue and white porcelain, but also to this variety of porcelain have more understanding and attention.

Historical studies show that the earliest blue-and-white porcelain ever appeared in the Yuan Dynasty.So,Why did blue-and-white porcelain happen to have appeared in the Yuan Dynasty, not in the more developed economic and trade Song Dynasty, or in the Ming Dynasty when porcelain-fired technology was more mature?

Yuan Dynasty Shangbai |

It starts with the aesthetics of the Yuan Dynasty.

Before the Yuan Dynasty, the Chinese in Tang and Song Dynasty preferred celadon to white porcelain.Lu Yu wrote in “Tea Sutra”: “Xing porcelain class silver, Yue porcelain class jade, Xing is not as good as Yue Yi also; If Xing porcelain class snow, Yue porcelain type ice, Xing is not as good as Yue 2 also; Xing porcelain white and tea color Dan, Yue porcelain blue and tea green, Xing is not as good as Yue three also.”(Xingyao produces white porcelain and Yue kiln produces celadon)

By the Yuan Dynasty, the status of celadon and white porcelain was reversed.Mongolians advocate white colors, such as the yurts they live in are all white, and many clothes are also white.Therefore, white porcelain in the Yuan Dynasty rapid development, production of white porcelain Jingdezhen also replaced the production of celadon Longquan, China’s porcelain manufacturing center and the world’s porcelain capital.

plain blue and white |

As suitable for drawing on white paper, white porcelain is suitable for drawing various patterns and colors.So “plain” becomes the base of blue-and-white porcelain.As to why the white porcelain is described in blue, which is related to the history of the Yuan Dynasty.

In Chinese history, the Yuan Dynasty was the longest-running dynasty.Mongol footprints throughout Eurasia, East and West culture and therefore the convergence of integration.In the Yuan flower, the culture features of Persian and Islamic civilization, such as blue paint.Muslims like blue best, because in the arid Middle East, water is the most precious resource, heaven is a water-filled world, is blue.

The design of the blue-and-white porcelain in the Yuan Dynasty was blue, not other colors, and there was another technical reason, that isA cobalt blue pigment used in celadon to keep the colour stable at high temperatures..Unlike other metal oxides, regular colors are not onlyIt’s different from what you expected, and it’s hard to control each time the color doesn’t match.

From this,The two colors-white and blue-that are preferred by the Mongols and the Islamists constitute the basic elements of blue and white porcelain.

Bold and unrestrained style |

As a people on horseback, the Mongols had a very unrestrained side, soThe blue-and-white porcelain they made were large and rich in size,It was the opposite of the Song Dynasty’s” You-porcelain-nothing-big-thing “style.On the decorative, Yuan Qing flower likes to use the dense decoration, this is also different from the Han nationality scholar-officials’ aesthetic.Mongolians especially like the peony, peony and other rich flowers,Therefore, the design of peony in the Yuan Qing Hua is very common.In addition, there are patterns of grapes and vines, which combine the characteristics of ancient Egyptian, ancient Greek and ancient Western Asian cultures.

Technical Improvement |

Before the Song Dynasty, porcelain used opaque color glaze, and Yuan Qing Hua is the first cobalt blue pigment painted on the porcelain did not glaze on the natural tire, and then painted on the finished porcelain coat of transparent glaze, then fired.The cobalt blue color is under the glaze, so it is called the underglaze color.The pattern drawn in this way will not change over the centuries.So, so to speak,The appearance of Yuan-Qing-hua marks the transition of porcelain from the era of sculpture to the era of painting.

The Integration of Chinese and Western Culture and Aesthetics |

Blue and white porcelain from the appearance to reach the peak, time is very short, unlike Song porcelain or three generations of Qing porcelain, there is a very long process of inoculation.That’s becauseThe aesthetics of the Yuan Dynasty was not the same as that of the Chinese civilization, but an external and subversive aesthetic,The Mongolian, Muslim and even the Western Asian aesthetic style began to spread into China on a large scale, forming a strong force.herefromThe integration of various civilizations brings a new perspective to the Chinese culture and aesthetics.