Chapter 39 The fifth section "Thousands of Peaks and Emerald Colors" talks about famous porcelain

In the history of world civilization, porcelain, like silk, is also a unique contribution of China with a distinctive national color. The emergence of porcelain has gone through a long process of development.In the process of firing pottery in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, wares similar to the characteristics of later porcelains were fired, which are generally called primitive porcelains.The conscious mass production of porcelain began in the Eastern Han Dynasty in the 1st century AD. The characteristic of porcelain is that the blank body is made of white kaolin (also called porcelain clay) as raw material, and the surface is covered with glassy glaze. It is fired at a high temperature of about 1200 ° C. The finished product has low water absorption, hard and delicate texture, and a crisp sound when knocked .The color of porcelain is mainly determined by the metal elements contained in the glaze.The glaze of celadon contains iron element, which is fired in a reducing flame to form ferrous oxide.When the content of ferrous oxide is 0.8% to 5%, the enamel is blue green, and the color is from light to thick. If it exceeds 5%, the color is dark brown or even black.White porcelain is a pure lime glaze, and the less iron content in the blank and glaze is required, the better.The red porcelain is caused by the coloration of colloidal simple copper, and the blue and white enamel contains cobalt.

After experiencing the development of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, by the Tang and Song Dynasties, my country's porcelain making technology had reached a fairly sophisticated level.Porcelain in this period was mainly divided into two categories: celadon and white porcelain, and a number of famous porcelain kilns appeared. Celadon is represented by Yue Kiln.The celadon of Yuezhou (present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang) is delicate in texture, as clear as water, and as lustrous as jade.Lu Guimeng's "Kyushu wind and dew, the kiln opens, and thousands of peaks and emerald colors come"; Meng Xiao's "Yueou (ouou) lotus leaves are empty"; It depicts the excellent color and texture of Yuezhou celadon.

White porcelain was represented by Xing kiln in Tang Dynasty and Jingdezhen kiln in Song Dynasty.The body and glaze of Xingzhou (now Xingtai, Hebei) white porcelain are very white, and the texture is fine and moist, like silver snow. It is as famous as Yuezhou celadon.The white porcelain made in Dayi, Sichuan in the Tang Dynasty was also very fine, with a thin but firm body, white color and clear sound.Du Fu praised in a poem: "Porcelain fired in Dayi is light and strong, and the buckle is like a mourning jade. The white bowl of Jun's house is better than frost and snow, and it is pitiful to send it to Maozhai in a hurry." Jingdezhen is known as the capital of porcelain. An important production center for porcelain, still famous all over the world.In Song and Yuan Dynasties, it produced not only white porcelain, but also other kinds of porcelain.At that time, the decoration of porcelain included scratches, embroidery (with needles), cone flowers, stacked flowers, underglaze red, blue and white, etc.In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, colorful and gorgeous porcelains such as fighting colors, five colors, pastel colors, and enamel colors were developed from this.The Dehua kiln in Fujian is famous for producing Jianbai, especially the ivory white Buddha statues of the Ming Dynasty, which are regarded as treasures all over the world.

Porcelain is one of the bulk commodities exported by our country since the Tang and Song Dynasties. Now many countries in the world have unearthed or treasured ancient Chinese porcelain.Therefore, some people also call my country's external transportation channels (especially sea routes) the ceramic road.