"Family Collection" continues to focus on the special program "The Return of Imperial Porcelain". Today, I want to talk to you about the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty in the collection of the Palace Museum.
This garlic bottle from the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty integrates classic decorative elements from China and the West, and concentrates Western aesthetics.
The bottle body is covered with a blue and white glaze, the mouth of the bottle is slightly raised, the bottom of the mouth is blue and white back pattern, the head of the bottle is decorated with crocus pattern, the upper part of the neck is white ground, and the lower part is a variant banana leaf pattern. The two areas separated by different patterns are decorated with different patterns of entwined crocus patterns, which can be said to be a combination of Chinese and Western.
Wei Yue, a docent at the Jiangxi Provincial Museum, said that Emperor Qianlong loved a variety of cultural types, and was willing to integrate Chinese aesthetics with Western aesthetics. And this garlic bottle is a microcosm of the integration of world cultures at that time.
The birth of foreign color reflects the collision and exchange of Chinese and Western cultures in the 17th and 18th centuries, and it is a foreign thing like enamel color. At first, it was the craftsmen in Guangzhou who successfully made this kind of foreign color, and later from Guangzhou to the court and then to Jingdezhen. However, the glaze made in Guangzhou is called Guangcai, the glaze in the court is called enamel, and the glaze made by local craftsmen in Jingdezhen is called Yangcai.
Huang Qinghua, president of Jingdezhen Tang Ying Society, introduced that "foreign color" is a term used by Tang Ying innovatively, before being sent to Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Factory to do pottery, Tang Ying worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for many years, has rich experience in the firing of enamel porcelain, and has a good understanding of the physical properties of pigments, which laid the groundwork for him to be appointed as the inspector of the Imperial Kiln Factory. In the early days, the pigments for painting foreign colors had to be imported from Europe, and after six years of Yongzheng, the Chinese not only mastered the pigment smelting technology, but also smelted more colors than abroad.