The weather is hot, the summer is coming, and I yearn for the comfort of "the evening wind is initially fixed, the lotus flowers in the pool are in full bloom, the fragrance is overflowing, and the spleen is refreshing". The lotus is one of the important decorative elements in China, people write it into poetry, paint it into paintings, and deduce a thousand gestures on ceramics, from the most common tangled lotus and folded branch lotus, to the vibrant, complex and not chaotic full of ponds, etc., the elegance of the lotus is vividly reflected.
Generally speaking, the lotus on the ceramic is wantonly flaunted and spreads its branches and leaves, but we often see a lotus bound by ribbons on the blue and white vessels of the Yongxuan period, why should we leave artificial traces on this natural lotus? What is the point of doing so?
Ming Qinghua Bouquet Lotus Pattern Plate Collection of the National Museum
This pattern of connecting lotus leaves, lotuses, lotuses, indigo, cispernia and other aquatic plants into a bunch is called "bunch of lotus patterns", also known as "lotus patterns". It can be seen as early as the Song Dynasty Yaozhou kiln and Cizhou kiln, when some Yaozhou kiln celadons were decorated with three bunches of lotus patterns and printed with the words "three lotuses".
Song Yaozhou kiln blue glaze printed boy playing with lotus pattern bowl Collection of the Palace Museum
In the Yuan Dynasty, Jingdezhen kiln blue and white porcelain often used this ornamentation, to the Ming Dynasty Yong, Xuan period "a handful of lotus" became a typical porcelain decorative pattern, mostly painted in the plate, called "the lotus plate", at this time the blue and white lotus plate painting delicate and elegant, the layout is dense, the lotus soft style is all at the end of the pen, or the open plate, or the folding plate, which is mostly the center of the plate painted with lotus, the mouth edge is decorated with sea waves or curly grass patterns. Of course, at this time, there are also more white glazed dark engraved lotus porcelain.
Yuan Qinghua Bouquet Lotus Curl Grass Pattern Collection of the National Museum
In the early Ming Dynasty, Longquan kiln celadon scratched flowers and put lotus-patterned plum vases in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
Ming Yongle Blue and white lotus plate Collection of the British Museum
Ming Xuande Blue and White Lotus Plate Collection of the Chicago Museum
Later generations of the Second Emperor of Yongqian were fascinated by Yongxuan Qinghua, sparing no effort to imitate, and there were many imitations of bouquet of lotus-patterned porcelain, even the most expensive yellow earth blue-flower in the imperial kiln, and there were also firing bouquet of lotus-patterned plates, which was very rare. The production of this period is more delicate, and most of the "one lotus" is designed as a symmetrical style left and right, which means that a product is clean and incorruptible.
Qing Yongzheng Huangdi Blue Flower Lotus Plate Sotheby's Hong Kong sold RMB 6,584,440 in 2011
·Infinite reverie about the lotus pattern·
The use of lotus patterns in ceramic art is extremely wide, from sculpture to carving to painting, there are many ceramics related to lotuses in the Song Dynasty, such as carved lotus plates, carved lotus petal bowls, bowls with lotus petals at the mouth edge... Among the so many forms of Song lotus vessels, the bunch of lotus patterns are actually not the common lotus decorative images at this time.
Song Yaozhou kiln blue glaze depicting water wave lotus pattern jar Collection of the Palace Museum
And it is reasonable to say that knotting a rope knot on porcelain is a very inconsistent with the quiet and elegant temperament of the Song Dynasty, and only the pursuit of grace and luxury in the Qing Dynasty can happen, such as the bag bottle designed by the Yongzheng Emperor himself, what kind of opportunity makes the Yaozhou kiln and the Cizhou kiln start firing this pattern? Let's boldly unfold two brain holes...
# 01 The appearance of the lotus pattern is related to the Song people's custom of flower arrangement.
In the Song Dynasty, an era when a hundred flowers competed for beauty, flower farmers "planted flowers like millets, moving to count", the flower market became large-scale, and the flower sellers in Beijing city were paved with horse-headed bamboo blue, and the sound of songs and songs could be heard. "People buy flowers from flower shops and flower vendors one after another, and flower arrangements on the desk have become one of the four elegant things of the Song people.
Gusu bustling map Part of the Collection of Liaoning Provincial Museum
In the process of buying flowers, as today, flower sellers naturally bundle flowers of the same category together for sale, if it is just selling lotus flowers? When the kiln workers went to the street to buy lotus flowers, they found the beauty from the bundles of lotus flowers, and innovatively directly used it as a pattern and carved it on the ceramic, not thinking that such celadon was loved by the market, so "a bunch of lotus" naturally became a typical porcelain decorative pattern, which seems to make sense.
# 02 The appearance of the lotus pattern is related to the song dynasty women's foot binding custom.
At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, women's foot binding began to become popular, and Tao Zongyi, a scholar at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, said, "Before Xi Ning Yuanfeng, there were few people who were still small, but in recent years, everyone has been effective, and those who do not do it are ashamed." From this, it can be seen that those who do not tie their feet after the Song Dynasty Yuan Feng years will even be ridiculed.
Song Anon. Miyonumuma Cool Map
Foot-wrapper, Jin Lian also, when people use "Golden Lotus" to refer to the beautiful foot, "Water Margin" image portrayal of the extremely profound Pan Jinlian, is the woman with small feet, its name "Golden Lotus" is the elegant name of the small foot, the text describes "Ximen Qing hurriedly squatted down to pick up, only to see the woman's pointed pair of small feet, is stilting on the edge of the fence ..." Song Dynasty women wrapped their feet in cloth to meet the deformed male aesthetics at that time. And the cloth wrapped around the feet, and the satin that binds the lotus flower, seem to have a similar state, both are wrapped in "lotus"...
Of course, the above two brain holes are only a little conjecture based on the customs and culture of the Song Dynasty, and it is uncertain whether the truth is so. But it is undeniable that the new pattern of the bundle lotus pattern was conceived by the Song people, showing the infinite imagination of the porcelain makers.
In the lotus, we see the aesthetics of life belonging to summer, lotus leaves, water waves, curly grass, mandarin ducks, patterns are displayed layer by layer, pinning people's beautiful expectations.