The Ming Yongle Dynasty lasted 21 years and was a period of great national strength in the Ming Dynasty. Ming Yongle blue and white porcelain products are famous for their tires, fine glazes, rich cyan, diverse shapes and beautiful ornamentation, and together with Xuande blue and white porcelain, they are known as creating the golden age of Chinese blue and white porcelain.
The blue and white porcelain of the Yongle period basically got rid of the characteristics of the transition period of Hongwu blue and white porcelain from the Yuan to the Ming, and formed its own fresh and beautiful style. There are two types of green materials used in Ming Yongle's blue and white porcelain: one is a type of hair color with a "rust scar". This type of imported material that has been tested as a low-manganese type of high-speed rail, that is, "Su Ni Ma Qing" and the like; The other type, the hair color is slightly lighter and elegant, and there are fewer "rust scars" on it, and this kind of green material has not been tested. Ming Yongle Dynasty blue and white porcelain is divided into two categories: excavated in the Yongle stratum of the former site of the Ming Royal Kiln Factory in Jingdezhen City, with the line before and after the seventeenth year of Ming Yongle (1419), divided into two periods.
01
Tire glaze
The glaze of the Yongle period is characterized by thickness, delicacy, smoothness, luster and flatness, and is passed down to the world as a birthless device. The degree of glaze green and white of Yongle porcelain is weakened compared with the Yuan Dynasty, and the glaze blue and white is caused by the traditional firing method of the entire Ming Dynasty, because the glaze is mixed with grass and wood ash and burned with firewood, so this effect is produced. The glaze composition and firing process of modern porcelain are different from those of the Ming Dynasty, so the glaze does not have this blue-white color.
Large plates, bottles, cans, etc. are fine sand bottoms, white, with small pieces of iron color spots, in the shape of glutinous rice flour, delicate and smooth to the touch. There are also glaze bottoms, the glaze bottom white glaze is uniform, the glaze is thin yellow, the thickness is pulp white or sparkling blue white, and some bottom glaze has a fine stripe. The bottom of the small vessel is glazed, and some of the bottom glaze is wavy; the fine porcelain bottom foot is flat cut and the heel is narrow. The bottom foot of the tool is mostly edged, that is, the cutting marks are obvious. The exposed tires of the ring feet are flinted red, and the inner walls of the feet are more yellow spots. The bottom of the plate and bowl is mostly convex and concave.
Ming Yongle A lotus plate with blue and white flowers, collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei
Akinei Lok Blue Flower Uchifu Plum Bottle - Osaka City Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Japan
Ming Yongle Blue and White Wave Dragon Pattern Jue Cup, Jue Tray, Taipei National Palace Museum Collection
Ming Yongle Blue and white geometric floral pattern lotus bowl, national palace museum in Taipei
02
Green material
Yongle blue and white hair color is rich, like a sapphire blue luster.
Zheng He began to make several missions to the West since 1405, and among the large number of rare treasures he brought back from foreign lands, there were many minerals used only for porcelain firing, in addition to "Su Ma Li Qing", including purple africa, purple ore, carmine and so on used to prepare color glazes. Yongle blue flowers, painted with Su Ma li green material, the blue flowers are rich in color, the glaze pattern is decorated with naturally formed crystal spots, and there is tin light, and the painted pattern is decorated with halo phenomenon. This is mainly because the imported green material belongs to the high-speed rail low manganese green material, which is obviously different from the domestic high manganese and low iron gray color, which is also one of the significant characteristics of the blue and white porcelain in the Yongle period.
In the early Ming Dynasty, Yongle blue flowers were all painted with Su material, but the color and spotted state of the blue flowers they presented were not the same, which can be roughly summarized into two types. 1, blue bright type: its violet hue must be obvious, spots, color surface in the jade-like glaze layer of thin, accompanied by small and loose bubbles, under the glaze to present a clear and transparent crystal radial, rare focus; this phenomenon is particularly prominent at the stroke line.
Ming Yongle blue flower fruit plum bottle
Ming Yongle blue and white bamboo stone banana pattern jade pot spring bottle - Forbidden City, Beijing
2, Shen Mu non heavy: this kind of hair color and enamel are inferior to the former. Its brushstrokes are filled with pigments where the inflection is thick, often showing a slightly concave and irregular "black brown tin spot", and the hue of the spot gradually transitions from black brown to green or yellow brown from the center to the edge. The reason for its poor hair color, in addition to factors such as enamel, temperature, and reduced flame atmosphere, is closely related to the quality of the Su material. The hair color of the su material is proportional to the lustrous luster of the glaze, and the more lustrous the glaze, the more gorgeous the blue and white hair color; conversely, the blue is gray.
Ming Yongle Blue and white tangled lotus pattern celestial sphere bottle, collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
Ming Yongle Blue and White Four Seasons Flower and Fruit Pattern Plate, Collection of national palace museum in Taipei
Ming Yongle Blue and White Four Seasons Flower Pattern Pier Bowl, National Palace Museum, Taipei
Ming Yongle blue and white seawater pattern incense burner - Forbidden City, Beijing
Watch
03
sculpt
The shape of blue and white porcelain in the Yongle period is much richer than that in the Hongwu period, with both traditional vessel shapes and instrument shapes produced by foreign cultures. On the basis of inheriting the traditional vessel type of the previous dynasty, the shape of Yongle Guan kiln porcelain was also stimulated by the demand for foreign trade and inspired by the Islamic gold, silver, bronze and other utensils brought back by Zheng He from the West, and the porcelain type was inclusive. It is the most abundant ornamentation and styling innovation in the porcelain of the official kilns of the past dynasties. There are many novel and peculiar shapes in the Yongle blue and white ware, most of which were invented and innovated under the influence of Islamic culture: such as the celestial ball bottle, the monk hat pot, the amphora gourd flat bottle, the amphora flat bottle, the multi-angle candlestick, the flower watering, the unhindered dignity and so on. Many of the shapes are based on gold and silverware, glassware and even pottery from the tributes of the Western Regions. Specific to a variety of decorative patterns, the application of geometric principles, ring belts, open light, average segmentation, polyangular symmetry and other painting techniques, coupled with the general dense pattern layout, makes people look refreshed.
Ming Yongle Blue and white flower pattern dragon ear flower watering, Taipei National Palace Museum collection
Ming Yongle Blue and white flowers Arabic without disobedience
Ming Yongle blue and white floral pattern octagonal candlestick - Forbidden City, Beijing
Ming Yongle Blue and white flower pattern flat pot, collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
04
Decoration
Yongle's ornamentation is sparse and beautiful, and the brushwork is natural.
The pattern of the drawing is mostly double hook filling, and the brush uses small strokes, often showing different shades of color. The inner and outer flowers of the round vessel are added, and the decorative technique of the painting of the center of the vessel is widely used. The lines of the blue and white ornament often have crystalline spots of cobalt iron, which is caused by the fact that the cobalt material is not finely ground. The composition forms on the utensils are diverse and colorful, and their ornamentation, whether it is a rough brush stroke or a thin stroke, gives people a sense of beauty and has distinct characteristics of the times. At this time, the flat chrysanthemum-themed ornamental pattern prevalent in the Hongwu Dynasty was no longer seen, which was a very important reminder in the broken era.
Ming Yongle Blue and white lotus dragon pattern celestial sphere bottle, collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
Ming Yongle blue and white tangled branches pattern fold along the washing - Beijing Forbidden City
The blue and white ornamentation of the Yongle period not only retains traditional patterns, but also has patterns influenced by foreign cultures.
The most common traditional ornaments are tangles, folded flowers, flowers and fruits. These ornaments often appear on large plates, bowls, plum bottles, pots and other utensils. In particular, the blue and white plate has folded branches, tangled lotus flowers, chrysanthemums, melons and fruits, and there are many variations in the pattern, with three, four, five and six flowers with different ornaments. Dragon and phoenix patterns also appear more often on the dishes and dishes of this period, with different combinations such as yunlong, cloud phoenix, and seawater dragon.
Ming Yongle Blue and White Seawater Dragon Pattern Flat Pot - Osaka City Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Japan
Ming Yongle Blue and white phoenix pattern three series teapot, Taipei National Palace Museum collection
The lotus pond pattern of the Yuan Dynasty and Hongwu period is still used. There are also a certain number of sea animal patterns, mainly found in goblets and other utensils. The character pattern has been reduced compared with the Yuan Dynasty, and the character pattern is only seen in the Hu people's dance music and baby drama pattern. Most of the layout of Yongle blue and white porcelain ornaments is relatively sparse, and there are a small number of ornamental layouts that are more dense, and the drawing of the pattern is generally more slender. Some of the products imitating the metals and pottery of West Asia are more obvious in the outer style, such as brocade, curly branch pattern, Arabic script, and some are integrated with traditional Chinese ornamentation or completely adopt traditional Chinese ornamentation. One of them is the tangle pattern that appears on the flower pouring in ruyi ear flat bottles, flat pots, and the winding method still retains the traditional Chinese method, but the flowers are different from the traditional Chinese painting methods. In particular, the wheat grain or petal pattern that appears on the side of the tangle branch is not seen in the traditional painting method of the mainland.
Ming Yongle Blue and White Character Pattern Ruyi Ear Flat Pot, Collection of national palace museum in Taipei
The flat pot is also known as the moon bottle, its type is imitated from the Middle East, but the decorative pattern is Chinese style, and the painting method of landscape landscape painting is a traditional ink painting form, but the characters are foreign and foreign. This is a painting of a landscape figure in the Yongle official kiln, both glaze color and painting. Flowers and birds, garden scenes, bamboo and stone banana patterns integrate realism and decoration, which has a great influence on the blue and white ornaments in later generations. The edges of the blue and white porcelain of the Yongle period are decorated with echo patterns, curly branches, seawater patterns, lotus petal patterns, ruyi cloud patterns, Ganoderma lucidum patterns, zigzag patterns, banana leaf patterns, flower patterns, plum blossom patterns, leaf patterns, etc. In addition to the decorative pattern of Yongle blue and white porcelain, in addition to being painted with blue and white, there are also a small number of depictions and engraving methods expressed in gold color.
Ming Yongle Qinghua hugged the moon bottle on the eyebrows
Ming Yongle blue and white bamboo stone banana pattern plum bottle - Forbidden City, Beijing
Ming Yongle Blue and white tangled branches lotus pattern with plum bottle
05
Money
Only a very small number of Yongle blue and white porcelain have annual models.
Only the official kiln pressed hand cup sees the four-character seal of the "Yongle Year System", written in the center of the vessel, surrounded by double circle lines, single circle lines and petal streamers. The most valuable are the blue and white double lion hydrangea heart model, flower heart model, Mandarin duck fence model. Folk kiln products occasionally have "Fu, Lu (Lu), Shou" and other characters.
Ming Yongle Qinghua "Yongle New Year" Tangled Branch Presser Cup - Forbidden City, Beijing
Ming Yongle blue flower pressed hand cup lion model
Since the beginning of Ming Zhengde, there have been imitation Yongle kiln ware.
Subsequently, Jiajing, Wanli, Kangxi, Yongzheng, and the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty all appeared in imitations. There are three fonts of imitation models in the past: blue and white writing, yin inscription, and yang script engraving; the font and writing method are also different. The periphery of the model is often decorated with a petal-shaped pattern, the lines are hard and straight, and some are surrounded by a single circle.
Ming Wanli Imitation Yongle Blue Flower Tangled Lotus Hand Cup, Transaction Price: RMB195,500, 2012-12-05 Beijing Poly International Auction Co., Ltd. Autumn Auction
Therefore, those written in four-character letters or six-characters on the vessel, on the bottom foot or on the mouth are mostly imitations of descendants.
Although there were few blue and white utensils written in the Yongle period, it opened a precedent for the ming and qing dynasties to write dynasty models in official kiln utensils.
Ming Yongle blue and white hand cup has been imitated by successive dynasties: the products imitated by the Ming Dynasty are bright and not colorful, and the instrument type is slightly larger than the genuine product; the products imitated by the Qing Kangxi and Yongzheng are similar to the real thing, but they still have the style of the Qing Dynasty on the tire glaze; the utensils imitated in the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods of the Qing Dynasty, the rust dots in the green material are lighter in color, yellow-brown, floating on the glaze without calming into it.
Qing Yongzheng Doucai Songzhu Plum Pressure Hand Cup, Price: RMB 621,000, 2011-10-23 Beijing Poly International Auction Co., Ltd. Boutique Auction
The product type imitated by Qing Tongzhi and Guangxu was much larger than that of Yongle, and the carcass was thick and thick, and the ornamentation was relatively rough.
The Republic of China imitates Yongle Blue Flower
Modern imitation porcelain tire thickness is uniform, while the real product is thinner, and the glaze can be seen in the light;
Modern imitations often ignore a convex line outside the feet of the utensils, which also needs attention in physical identification.
Modern imitation Yongle model