Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, was particularly fond of red, according to Liu Chen's "Deeds of the Beginning of the Kingdom": "Taizu used fire virtue, five colors were still fire, and the soldiers' battle jackets, battle skirts, and strong hats were all red." This preference is also reflected in the color of royal porcelain, nearly 100 pieces of Hongwuguan kiln porcelain collected by the Forbidden City in Beijing, of which only 20 pieces are blue and white porcelain, most of which are glazed red porcelain, including a considerable number of glazed red plates, becoming the world's largest collection of Hongwu glazed red plates. Hongwu glaze red plates are very rare and precious, but when the Cultural Relics of the Forbidden City were relocated, they did not take these large plates with them, it turned out that because the Hongwuguan kiln porcelain did not have knowledge, it was not clear that the identity of these glazed red plates was not known until the early 90s of the last century, when the same glazed red plates were unearthed at the Site of the Ming Imperial Kiln kiln in Jingdezhen, and it was finally clear that these large plates were Hongwuguan kiln porcelain.
Hongwuguan kiln glaze red and blue flowers are produced under the same technical conditions, the two in addition to the coloring agents are copper and cobalt, the process flow is basically the same, so that the tire glaze characteristics are generally similar; but because the glaze red and blue flowers on the glaze requirements and kiln conditions are slightly different, so the appearance characteristics of the two are different.
The Hongwu Dynasty lasted for 31 years, and the raw material formula and production process of glaze red were different before and after, and this difference can also be seen from the characteristics of the tire glaze and the color of the glaze red.
Tire glaze characteristics
The red fetal bone in Hongwu glaze has two types: coarse and dense. The rough one is slightly lighter and has a poor degree of porcelain. A dense section is delicate and compact, with a slight gray in white. According to physical and chemical tests, the content of CaO in the glaze layer is higher than that of blue and white porcelain, the potassium content is lower, it is calcium alkaline, and the viscosity change at high temperature firing is not too large, and there is less flow glaze.
Glaze mask Ming Dynasty blue and white ware characteristics, enamel hypertrophy, moist, glaze color blue and white. There are two kinds of glaze layers: one is thick and shiny like a pile of grease, milky white, with ice cracks or long strips of open sheets; the other is fat and dense, the glaze surface has a very fine orange peel pattern, and the white contains green or gray. It is common to see shrinking glaze points or shrinking glaze lines, and kiln red is seen at the exposed tire. The bottom of the jade pot spring bottle, the holding pot and the large bowl with a diameter of about 20 cm are glazed, but the bottom glaze is not strong, and the glaze tone with a higher degree of vitrification of the body is different, which is a white pulp glaze, with a slight yellowing in the thin place and a milky white or cyan color in the thickness. The body often has open pieces, especially some utensils, probably due to insufficient firepower, there is a phenomenon similar to the pulp tire. Most of the glaze in the glaze is red and bright, and most of the glaze is grayish in color.
The foot with the foot utensil has changed the characteristics of the Yuan Dynasty oblique cutting to become flat cutting, and the bottom of the instrument has collapsed slightly.
The glaze is red in color
Hongwu glaze has a variety of colors, most of which are lighter or grayer, some utensils have a positive red phenomenon, and some are dark black.
1, bright red - the color is pure and intense, most of the outer edges of the line are faint, and some even the entire glaze is light red. Very few are colorful and have no halos. Looking at this red remnant porcelain in the Hongwu glaze, the lotus petals do not borrow edges to infer that this process was used in the early Days of Hongwu.
2, ochre red - the color is thick, the section is observed with a high magnification, the glaze red is in the middle of the white glaze layer, that is, there is a layer of white glaze on the tire, which is glaze red, and there is a layer of white glaze on the glaze red.
3, gray red - the glaze red color is thinner.
4, gray black - the color is mainly gray black, slightly red, called glaze gray or glaze black. Some of the visible iron brown spots that are dark and gray are visible, which is the reason for the high iron content.
The disc-shaped flower-shaped mouth is folded along, the petal-shaped arc wall corresponds to the flower mouth, and the circle foot is trapezoidal, with a fine sand bottom and a flint red. The disc carcass is thick and heavy. The pattern is decorated with glazed red lines and bright colors. The center of the plate is themed ornamentation, the inner painting is a folded branch lotus pattern, and the center of the plate and the inner wall are painted with two symmetrical floral patterns, which are decorated in an elaborate and skillful manner. The decoration of red ware in the glaze of Ming Hongwu is mainly based on plant themes, and its variety of plant species and novelty of content are unmatched by previous periods. This Hongwu glaze red plate decoration is rich and colorful, the glaze hair color is pure and bright, which better reflects the firing of the red in the early Ming glaze, and is a treasure in the red ware of the early Ming glaze that is not very diverse and numerous.
The picture shows the collection of ancient porcelain chains of the National Research Institute