Recently, I have turned over a lot of auction catalogues, and this "Jinghe Record" is eye-catching, and I have paid special attention to it. This is a catalogue launched by a newly established auction company (Jinghe Auction) in Guangzhou, rough browsing, mainly miscellaneous, not much porcelain, but there is still a large plate of Longquan official kiln in the early Ming Dynasty that attracted my attention.
This plate is very large, with a diameter of 57 centimeters, it was auctioned from a small auction in Japan many years ago, and I also started this plate in the past, so I had the impression that the plate was later transferred to a collector's collection in Hangzhou.
The real thing is many times more beautiful than the picture.
Many people say that the current auction catalogue has more "beautification", but this phenomenon does not exist for longquan official kilns in the early Ming Dynasty. The color of celadon is actually difficult to shoot accurately, it is easy to cast color, and the emerald blue color of longquan official kilns in the early Ming Dynasty is particularly difficult to restore.
The glaze of the Longquan official kiln ware in the early Ming Dynasty is very characteristic, we have done statistics according to a large number of porcelain specimens, most of them are applied three glazes (three glaze traces can be seen on the section), the glaze water quality is fat, the burning is mainly emerald blue, the color is rich, the green color is flowing, the luster is very strong (different from the luster of the glass glaze), but it is also bright and contained, giving people a deep sense of sea. This beauty is hard to photograph.
If you compare the glaze of the Longquan kiln of the Southern Song Dynasty, such as the same calm glaze style, the Southern Song Dynasty is realized by black tires, the tire color is deep, and the glaze color can be lined with deep and quiet, and the tire soil of the Longquan official kiln in the early Ming Dynasty is washed very finely, the tire color is white, and its depth seems to come from the accumulation of glazed cyan itself. In addition, before the Yuan Dynasty, the phenomenon of Longquan celadon opening was more common, and the Song Dynasty Longquan celadon that was handed down from generation to generation was rare if it was not opened. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, longquan official kiln ware is not the case, from the perspective of public and private collections at home and abroad, basically it is not open, even if the fragments excavated from the site of the large kiln Maple Cave Rock Official Kiln, the glaze is not a few. In essence, the tire quality of longquan officials in the early Ming Dynasty was firm and dense, and the density of enamel was very high.
Due to its huge size, the large plate is the most difficult to shoot in all kinds of instrument shapes in the Longquan Guan kiln in the early Ming Dynasty, which is not only easy to deflect color, but also easy to flatten the shape. Due to the lack of references, looking at pictures often can not feel the heavy and huge shocking momentum of the large market.
In the process of publishing the book "Discovery: Longquan Guanyao kiln in Daming Prefecture" in the same year, we found that the specimen of longquan guanyao porcelain pieces in the early Ming Dynasty was difficult to shoot, more difficult than other Longquan celadon porcelain, and it was particularly difficult to faithfully restore the beauty of its glaze color and the beauty of carved flowers. Therefore, for the Longquan official kiln ware in the early Ming Dynasty, the author suggests that you must look at the actual object in order to truly feel its enamel characteristics, the atmosphere of its shape, the regularity of its craftsmanship, and its unique official style.
Jinghe this plate is a typical Longquan official kiln ware in the early Ming Dynasty. In the book "Discovery: Longquan Guanyao kiln in Daming Prefecture", the author made it clear that the large plate is one of the five major instrument shapes of the Longquan guanyao kiln in the early Ming Dynasty (plum bottle, jade pot spring bottle, holding pot, bowl and large plate), which can be divided into two categories: folded along the plate and non-folding along the plate. Folding edges, except for a small number of round plate edges, most of them are diamond mouths, and the abdominal wall of this kind of plate is also shaped as a diamond flap, and most of them are sixteen diamond petals, and a few are twelve out (our museum repaired a total of 109 diamond folding plates, of which only 10 are twelve diamond mouths, and the rest are sixteen diamond mouths). Respect and this piece is also sixteen out.
The glaze of this plate is also very good, fat, shiny, and watery. At the junction of the bottom and the ventral wall, there is a circle of slightly concave circles, like a large moon, and the position on the back of the concave line is exactly the place where the circle foot is located. This sign shows that after the large plate is formed, it may also go through a "auction billet" process, that is, through the auction billet, the upper weight of the utensil is concentrated on the circle foot, and the tire wall of the body is more compact, so that the large and thick body is not easy to deform or collapse during the firing process. The large circle foot is shallow and thick, the glaze is rounded, and it does not bear the "heavy responsibility" of cushion burning, but is burned by the outsole scraping glaze for a week to reasonably disperse the pressure.
If the surface of the large plate is touched by hand, there is a slight sense of bump, which should be caused by pouring glaze, because the plate is large and thick, and the ordinary dipping glaze dipping method is not enough.
Careful observation and analysis will find that the official kiln ware not only has "official samples" to follow (fired according to the same sample as the Jingdezhen official kiln, which can be compared with the Jingdezhen official kiln blue and white ware), but also the process is very exquisite. Plates like this, which seem to be light and textureless, have a "simple" shape, but in fact, the difficulty of firing is very high, and there are many technical difficulties to overcome. Our museum also carried out imitation in that year, but even with the help of advanced equipment that is now highly advanced, it is still not good, burned down, and deformed a lot. It can be said that plates like this, no one can imitate now, there will be no fakes. Moreover, the large number of porcelain pieces excavated from the official kiln site show that the yield rate at that time was very low, and now it is handed down that is the "genuine product" that is selected from one hundred miles or even one in a thousand miles, which is the result of the imperial court investing a lot of manpower and material resources in that year, regardless of the cost of work, and its preciousness is self-evident.
In addition, since the publication of the book "Discovery: Longquan Official Kiln in Daming Prefecture" in 2005, the attention and research on the Longquan Official Kiln in the early Ming Dynasty has indeed heated up, and almost every year in these years, one or two pieces and two pieces of Longquan Official Kiln ware in the early Ming Dynasty have been seen sporadically. But in general, the quantity is still very limited, and some of the quality is still controversial. This large-size diamond-flap plate photographed by Jinghe is perfect in appearance and is a very rare typical vessel of longquan official kiln in the early Ming Dynasty.
The author also hopes that its value can be properly reflected.
Collection of the Izumitsu Museum of Art, Japan