The cup is a new type of Longquan kiln in the Southern Song Dynasty, and it is also a more common type of black tire. However, most of the surviving artifacts are excavated, and the heirlooms with good quality are very rare.
The following example is even more isolated, and has never been seen elsewhere.
Mango mouth, mouth along the outer luxury, barrel abdomen, circle foot, one side of the mouth along the lower press the small handle of the mite snout. Black tire, thin glaze thick, glaze pink, strong jade texture, glaze open irregular Wenwu pieces, circle foot scraping glaze pad burning, slender and regular.
This Piece of Southern Song Dynasty Longquan Kiln excavated the cup from the Hangzhou Urban Life Site, has been restored, the size is small, only 5.7 cm high, the production is exquisite, and the glaze color is somewhat similar to the Southern Song Dynasty official kiln ware. According to its tire glaze characteristics, the firing process style can be broken into the most core kiln products of Longquan kiln.
In addition to the above-mentioned barrel style, in fact, it is more common to be a bowl-type cup body, a ring handle with a ruyi-shaped finger pad. Typical instruments such as the "Longquan kiln celadon handle cup (height 3.7, caliber 9.1 cm)" excavated from the Song Tomb of the Emperor's Tomb in Shantang Village, Huzhou in 1972.
The Imperial Tomb Mountain Song Tomb unearthed Longquan kiln celadon handle cup
It is now in the collection of Huzhou Museum
Black tire, pink glaze, ice cracks, purple iron feet
This type of cup has also been found in the black tires excavated in the area of Longquan Xikou Tile Kiln, and the glaze characteristics of the cup tires excavated from the Imperial Tomb Mountain are close to the Xikou products, which can be roughly considered to be produced in the Xikou area.
The following are two cases of longquan kiln black tire handle cups collected by the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, which is also a typical Xikou kiln style.
Height 4, caliber 9.5 cm
Height 4.1, caliber 13.2 cm
In addition, the author also collected several specimens of the longquan kiln black tire cup excavated from the Hangzhou urban life site, the shape is basically the same as the Xikou, but the instrument is fuller, according to the characteristics of its tire glaze firing process, it should be produced by the large kiln.
Hangzhou construction site unearthed Longquan kiln black tire cup repairer
It is worth mentioning that these black tire cup specimens, glazed have signs of soil erosion, showing a large calcified white or beige color, only in the mouth of the utensils, circle foot and other parts can be seen in the original pink or gray cyan and so on. This phenomenon is also frequently found in the Specimens of Ru Kiln and Southern Song Dynasty Official Kiln. And the iron bone characteristics of such specimens are very obvious, and there is often a rusty texture at the exposed tire, and the iron content is undoubtedly very high.
The picture below shows the Longquan kiln cup collected by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is the same as the style of the large kiln. It can be seen from the vitrification effect of the glaze that the firing temperature is higher, so that the flow glaze is more serious, the mango mouth is obvious, the upper glaze is thin, and the glaze is accumulated at the end of the circle and the bottom. In addition, the mouth is slightly deformed.
The above Song Longquan kiln cups are mainly black tires, all of which are mango-mouth iron feet. Iron feet are the characteristics of black tires, and the mangkou design is convenient for stacking utensils, which can save kiln positions and increase production. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States has a Southern Song Dynasty Longquan kiln cup specimen, which is the best explanation for the origin of this kind of mangkou. In addition, the mangkou ware can also be further processed, wrapped in metal edges, becoming gold porcelain, buckle silver porcelain, more noble.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Longquan kiln stacks cups of diamond petals to burn specimens
In 2010, shandong Heze Yuan Dynasty shipwreck excavations also included a "Longquan kiln blue glazed single ear cup (height 4.1, caliber 7 cm)", similar to the large kiln type cup style. This piece of cup white tire, tire glaze in all aspects of the characteristics have a more typical Yuan Dynasty color, the same out of several other Pieces of Longquan kiln celadon such as goblet, cross treasure pestle plate, etc. also have more distinctive characteristics of the times, and most of the cultural relics such as egg white glaze and blue and white ware from the same ship can be determined as Yuan Dynasty artifacts, so this piece of the cup for the Yuan Dynasty Longquan kiln production is undoubted. The ship unearthed more than 100 cultural relics, and most of them are high-end products, and the identity of the owner is either rich or expensive. This example illustrates the fact that the Longquan kiln used cups mainly for the upper class. This can also explain its rare circulation, black tires, exquisite production and other signs.
Shandong Heze Yuan Dynasty shipwreck out of the water Longquan kiln blue glazed single ear cup
These two types of cup barrel and bowl shape, their shape is slightly similar to the popular Han before the wine, but the two types generally carry three legs, the difference is also obvious. Closer to this is the gold and silver belt handle cup in the Sogdian gold and silverware of the Tang Dynasty, and the relatively obvious continuity can be seen in both the cup style and the handle design. Tracing back to its mother's origin, it is speculated that the use of the cup should be a wine utensil.
Longquan kiln black tire multi-grained pieces, generally considered not suitable for use as a food eating utensils, but mainly in the type of furnishings. However, the author believes that this was not the case with the black tires of the early Longquan kiln, as described at the beginning of this article, the black tire powder blue glazed cup is an example. Although the vessel has a grained piece, it is obviously unintentional, indicating that the pursuit of glaze and flawlessness at that time was still the first, and its tire color, glaze color, and shape all had simulations of the Ru kiln celadon style.
Similar high-quality black-tipped Longquan specimens have been discovered in recent years, whether it is the remains of Longquan kiln sites or the urban life sites of Hangzhou, the former capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. According to the investigation of the kiln site, such porcelain pieces are generally found at the bottom of the accumulation layer of porcelain pieces in the Southern Song Dynasty, and it is also evidenced that the objects in the early Southern Song Dynasty are also reliable. The exquisite degree of such products is even more exquisite than that of black tire thick glazed celadon and white tire thick glazed celadon in the late Southern Song Dynasty, and the exquisite production process is breathtaking. Compared with the ordinary Longquan kiln celadon products of the same period, there is a huge gap in the technical level, including blanks, glaze formulas, glaze application technology, loading and firing process and other aspects.
The black tire powder blue glaze cup is exquisitely made and the glaze color is mature, which shows that the firing level of the black tire in the Longquan kiln has reached a considerable level in the early Southern Song Dynasty, and the theory of the longquan black tire imitation official is obviously not established. In addition, from the newly discovered southern Song Dynasty early Longquan kiln black tire product distribution, there are many kiln sites, the center of gravity is not only in the Xikou, the number of kiln sites of the big kiln black tire seems to be more than the Xikou, the quality is also higher, from the product characteristics to analyze, the time of the kiln firing black tire should be earlier than the Xikou.
If it is said that the black tire thick glazed celadon and the white tire thick glazed celadon in the longquan kiln of the late Southern Song Dynasty are a mutation, then this mutation has actually appeared in the early Southern Song Dynasty, and the two types of exquisite products in the late Southern Song Dynasty are only the continuation of the fine products of the early Southern Song Dynasty, and even the Southern Song Dynasty official kilns may be affected by it to a certain extent.