Ancient Chinese glass in the War and Han Dynasties
What is the relationship between water jade, water essence, crystal and glass?
In ancient China, crystal was originally called "water jade".
The Classic of Mountains and Seas: "Three hundred miles to the east, the mountain of the Tang Dynasty... Polyhydrate jade"; "Danshui comes out of the fire, and the southeast flow is injected into Luoshui, where polyhydrate jade".
"Chasing after the water, the north flow is injected into Wei, of which there is much water jade."
Water jade, its brilliance is like water, its firmness is like jade.
In fact, the hardness of the crystal is 7 °, and the "jade" in the broad sense of ancient China includes chalcedony (the backbone of which is agate), lapis lazuli, turquoise and local jade species (the so-called "jade, beautiful stone"), in which in addition to the chalcedony and crystal system on both sides of the same hardness, the rest such as lapis lazuli, turquoise, and Khotanese and even many local jade species, river abrasives, etc., their hardness is less than or even much smaller than the crystal.
In the Classic of Mountains and Seas, crystals are also called "water blue": "... Geng Mountain, no grass and trees, more water and blue".
"Fu Ruitu": "Beautiful stone is like jade, and the water essence is like jade Yingye".
"Guangya": "The Water Spirit also".
Li Shizhen: Brilliant crystal light, like the elite of water.
"Shu Wu Strange Name Sparse": "The water essence is out of the Qin Kingdom, a Li Nan".
Li Nan is a nickname for Liu Li.
Well, to summarize: water jade, water essence was the earliest ancient name for natural crystal, and then due to the emergence of "artificial crystal" - glass, its flowing color, solid crystal and natural crystal are no different or even more than that, so it is also used as another name for glass.
The main ingredient of crystal is silica, which is the main raw material of ancient glass.
Text; cup with pot
Cup
Cover the pot
Square pot
Diagonal flow pot
Bird lid live ring amphora
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